LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



i 



hap. 




^% 



* */ 



t UNITED STATES OP AMERICA.! 



Rachel 



WEEPING FOR HER CHILDREN. 

J 

BY REV. N. VANSANT, 



OF THE NEWARK CONFERENCE. 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY KEY. C. N. SIMS, D.D. 



In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great 
mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, 
because they are not. — Matt, ii, 18. 



^ Hoikos/. _. 

NEW YORK: 
NELSON & PHILLI PBt~ 
CIXCINNATI • 
HITCHCOCK & WALDEN. 

1876. 

or 



•an/* 



OiO\ 




Tm Library 

OF Co¥K£RESS 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1876, by 

NELSON & PHILLIPS, 

in the Ollice of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 




@ss© 



INTRODUCTION 



MONG the most delicate and diffi- 
cult offices of Christian sympathy 
is that of bringing consolation into the 
home where death has entered and 
borne away the loved ones. 

To recall to the heart its grief, and yet 
soothe its pain ; to revive the memory of 
agony, and meanwhile sweeten its bitter- 
ness ; to re-awaken the sense of loneliness 
and loss, and at the same time mitigate 
it by the inspiration of Christian hope ; 
this is a work often laid upon the faith- 



4 Introduction. 

ful pastor, and demanding the exercise 
of his greatest tenderness and wisdom. 

Such a work of ministration this book 
proposes to aid in accomplishing. It 
treads again the path of distressing ap- 
prehension with the bereft parent as he 
watched the fatal disease surely ap- 
proaching the citadel of life ; it recalls 
the silence and desolation of the hour 
when the dead lay in our homes, the 
closing of the casket, the filling up of 
the grave, and the empty house to which 
we returned. 

It sits down with us to talk over our 
self-accusing regrets for fancied omis- 
sions of care and neglect of duty. It 
accompanies the agitated mind in its 
questionings about the life and condi- 



Introduction. 5 

tion of the loved and lost one in the 
land of spirits, and from the abundant 
consolations of God's word and Chris- 
tian philosophy it pours comfort into 
the sorrowing heart. 

In this work the author speaks with 
the wisdom of one who has been taught 
by the experience of bereavement, as 
it has fallen upon his own heart and 
home, and has skillfully ministered to 
the wounded spirit. 

If I may speak from a careful reading 
of the book on the one hand, and from 
personal experience of the grief it would 
assuage on the other, I would say his 
task has been tenderly and successfully 
performed. 

I know not that any other writer has 



6 Introduction. 

essayed the same field as our author ; 
and I doubt not, if the book be made 
the testimonial of the pastor's sympathy 
to the bereaved ones of his flock, as is 
suggested, it will alleviate many a sor- 
row, and bind pastor and parishioner 
together in a closer union of sympathy 

and affection. 

C. N. Sims. 




PREFACE 



HE place which this little volume is 
designed especially to fill is that of 
a pastor's gift-book to parents in be- 
reavement. 

Every pastor in parting with these 
stricken members of his flock, as they 
have lingered at the new-made graves of 
their children, must have felt the need 
of some such book, which, by its silent 
counsels in the hours of home medita- 
tion and grief, might be a fitting supple- 
ment, in permanent form, to his own 
spoken words of comfort. A volume of 
this kind, received by them at such a 



8 Preface. 

time from the hands of a sympathizing 
pastor, is likely to be cherished, both as 
a souvenir of his kindness, and as a con- 
stant companion, to which they may turn 
at will for encouragement and help. 

Should any pastor find himself unable, 
from any cause, to distribute the book at 
his own expense, as suggested, the price 
of it is so small that all bereaved par- 
ents, however moderate their circum- 
stances, will gladly receive it as a pur- 
chase from his hands. In the deep sense 
of loneliness and desolation which fol- 
lows the burial of dear children, how 
welcome to the sorrowing parents is the 
call of the faithful pastor, and it will be 
rendered doubly so if, following his per- 
sonal counsels and prayers, he can leave 
with them an added offering of love in 
form like this. 



Preface. 9 

With devout prayer that the Holy 
Spirit, whose guidance has been invoked, 
and we trust enjoyed, in the preparation 
of this work, may abundantly sanctify it 
to the purpose intended, we " cast " it as 
" bread upon the waters," to be found by 
many, if God so will, in a rich harvest 
of comfort, " from henceforth," and " after 
many days." N. V. 

Newark, N. J., 1876. 
2 



CONTENTS. 



«*+ 

Chapter Page 

I. The Common Lot 13 

II. Only the Casket 22 

III. Love's Offerings and Anxieties 29 

IV. Questionings 35 

V. It is Well 54 

VI. Not Lost, but Gone Before 68 

VII. The Morning Cometh 99 

VIII. Smiling Through Tears 116 

IX. Conclusion 142 



RACHEL 

WEEPING FOR HER CHILDREN 



CHAPTER I. 

THE COMMON LOT. 
Chastisement, whereof all are partakers. — Heb. xii, 8. 

There is no flock, however watched and tended, 

But one dead lamb is there ! 
There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended, 

But has one vacant chair. — H. W. Longfellow. 

tHE ancient edict, "Dust thou art, 
and unto dust shalt thou return," is 
universal. It was addressed to Adam 
after his fall, not " as a mere individual, 
the consequences of whose misconduct 
terminated in himself, but as a public 



14 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

man, the head and representative of the 
human race." 

Accordingly, though neither Eve nor 
any one of her posterity was embraced 
by name in the edict, yet both she and 
they, no less than Adam himself, suffered 
the mortal consequences of his disobe- 
dience. One can scarcely avoid a feel- 
ing of deep sadness as, turning to the 
fifth chapter of Genesis, he reads the 
short sentence, " and he died," appended 
to the brief biography of each of the old 
patriarchs from Adam to Noah. But a 
solitary exception to this antediluvian 
mortality is noted. Of Enoch alone it is 
written that he "walked with God: and 
he was not ; for God took him :" an ex- 
ception which only brings the rule more 
vividly before the mind. So St. Paul 
declares that " death reigned from Adam 



The Common Lot. 15 

to Moses ;" and afterward he more broad- 
ly affirms that " it is appointed unto men 
once to die ;" to men as belonging to a 
fallen, death-doomed race, including both 
sexes and all ages. 

In the ordering of his wisdom and 
goodness, " God setteth the solitary in 
families," and this implies those tender 
relationships expressed by the terms 
parents and children. Of the latter it is 
computed that one half die in infancy, 
and more than one fourth under the age 
of a single year. O if death would loose 
only " the silver cord " of old age in its 
weakness, his ravages would seem far 
less cruel ; but not content with this, 
he cuts down manhood in its strength, 
youth in its vigor, and even prattling 
childhood in its innocence and sweet- 
ness. The grave's stern recruiting offi- 



1 6 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

cer, he echoes her greedy demand, 
" Give, give," and never says, "It is 
enough." Without eyes, he sees not 
the soft, angelic beauty of tender in- 
fancy as it sleeps in maternal arms, or 
awaking, gazes with bright, inquiring 
eyes on each surrounding object, smiling 
with lips pure as the dew-drop, and 
cheeks more lovely than the blushing 
rose. Without ears, he hears not the 
happy infantile laugh responsive to a 
mother's caresses, or the sportive crow- 
ing in cradle or on couch with no one 
consciously present, the notes of which 
fall on parental ears in tones " more wel- 
come than the harmonies of all the sing- 
ing birds," and more soothing to weari- 
ness and care than the most delicious 
sounds of " bright Apollo's lute," or of 
all the instruments of music combined. 



The Common Lot. 17 

Without a heart, he feels no sympathy 
with the fond mother or doting father in 
their overflowing joy at the joy of their 
precious innocent ; and when sickness 
comes, spreading pallor over the face 
which but yesterday wore the freshness 
of health, and hushing to low moans of 
suffering the merry accents which still 
linger on memory's ear, he feels no pity 
in their overwhelming grief and suspense, 
but coldly surveying the scene, gloats 
over his helpless prey, and, alas ! too 
soon, his lifeless victim. 

O torn and bleeding spirits ! are ye 
alone in your sadness and sorrow? Has 
no other hearth-stone been invaded ? 
Has no other home circle been broken ? 
Has no other bud of promise been blast- 
ed ? Has no other rising star of hope 
set in sudden darkness ? 



1 8 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

" The air is full of farewells for the dying, 
And mourning for the dead. 
The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, 
Will not be comforted." 

Here and there may be found a family 
which, during a single generation, escapes 
the pangs of infant bereavement, but the 
succeeding generations are seldom thus 
favored. There is no class, no home, to 
which death comes not sooner or later 
in search of childhood trophies. Not 
alone does he enter where low ceilings 
and uncarpeted floors, bare walls, bleak 
windows, and scanty furniture, betoken 
want ; but from this social extreme all 
the way up to gilded mansions, with 
their exquisite workmanship, and their 
luxurious adornings of costly furniture, 
pictures, tapestries, and needle-work, the 
homes of wealth and elegance and ease — 
through the whole social range, death 



The 'Common Lot. 19 

obtrudes himself in bold or stealthy- 
tread, and with his ice-cold hand chills 
the warm heart of infancy. 

Think, then, O mourning ones, that 
thousands of other hearts are beating 
responsive to your grief! Between you 
and them all the way down or up the 
social scale, there is a fellowship of suf- 
fering, a common chord of sympathy that 
vibrates at the touch of woe. The hand 
which pens these lines has been moved 
to its "labor of love" by a heart into 
which once and again the bitter cup of 
child-bereavement has poured itself to 
the full. And so, perhaps, the hand of 
your dear pastor or other friend, the 
bearer to you of this humble tribute, has 
been moved to its office of sympathy by 
like experiences. And what of the street 
in which you live ? Has but one home 



20 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

from end to end of it witnessed the 
group in mourning, and the last fond 
kiss of love pressed long and sadly upon 
the marble brow of childhood? What 
of next door ? Has no little coffin been 
carried thence ? And as, amid the long- 
drawn shadows of the setting sun, you 
visit the tenderest spot to you on earth 
to plant new flowers, and water them 
with a fresh libation of tears, can you 
see hard by no other graves of kindred 
size, and no other mourners performing 
like offices of wounded and bleeding 
affection ? 

Many a one in the deep anguish of 
bereavement, catching the pathetic ap- 
peal of ancient Jerusalem, has exclaimed, 
" Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass 
by ? behold, and see if there be any 
sorrow like unto my sorrow." But in 



The Common Lot. 21 

reality there has lived on earth only one 
being of all the human race who could 
truthfully adopt this lamentation — Jesus, 
the " man of sorrows, and acquainted 
with grief." As to all others the state- 
ment of St. Paul applies : " There hath 
no temptation [trial] taken you but such 
as is common to man." 




CHAPTER II. 



ONLY THE CASKET. 



Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was 
and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.— 
Eccles. xii, 7. 

Such the thought, when toward God's acre, 

'Mid broad fields and woodlands found, 
We went forth in midst of winter, 

There to make in frozen ground, 
And where all was bare and leafless, 

Resting-place for baby's head ; 
Which so oft, when tired and restless, 

We had laid on downy bed. 
Rough winds blew the falling snow-flakes, 

Clouds dropped low, like funeral pall, 
O'er the grave where we with heart-ache 

Asked, " Of life can this be all ? " 
And took up our baby darling, 

There to lay him, side by side, 
With his sister, softly sleeping, 

Who, ere he was born, had died. 

— Eldridge Mix. 




Only the Casket. 23 

S creatures of sense, we are prone 
to " look at the things which are 
seen," rather than " at the things which 
are not seen." 

When, therefore, we gaze for the last 
time upon the cold, clay form of infancy, 
and then carefully lay it away in its 
damp earth-bed for " a sleep that knows 
no waking," it is but natural to forget 
the invisible, immortal spirit which so 
lately gave it warmth and motion. At 
such a time there comes sweeping over 
the heart an almost irresistible .feeling 
that naught is left us by the greedy 
grave but the vacant chair, the idle toys, 
and unused garments of the lost one, 
and these only to mock our blasted 
hopes and withered joys. 

But is it thus? If the voice of nature 
says yes, the diviner voice of revelation 



24 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

answers no. It is but " the dust " that 
" returns to the earth," while " the spirit 
returns unto God." 

Traced back to its primitive elements, 
the human body, in its best estate, is but 
the clay soil, the red earth, out of which 
God fashioned the first man, as the name 
Adam imports. "And the Lord God 
formed man of the dust of the ground, 
and breathed into his nostrils the breath 
of life." What, then, is the lifeless form 
of childhood but the dusty tenement 
without its tenant — a casket with the 
jewel gone ? Yet O, disconsolate one, 
we chide thee not for the tears which 
bedew the grave of thy darling, much 
less for the smiles and kisses once lav- 
ished upon its living flesh, fairer to thee 
than the opening rose, and more fra- 
grant than the balmiest breath of spring- 



Only the Casket. 25 

tide ! For although even then it was 
but clay, yet it was organized clay ; 
though but dust, it was beautiful dust, 
molded and shaped by the hand of the 
artist Divine, " fearfully and wonderfully 
made." O it seemed too pure and too 
precious to be given as a prey to the 
cruel grave ! No exaggeration was it 
for a poet to write the stanza : — 

" So blooms the human face divine, 

When youth its pride of beauty shows : 
Fairer than spring the colors shine, 
And sweeter than the virgin rose " — 

words which, though intended to de- 
scribe only the charms of the living 
countenance in its early beaming, may 
be fitly applied to the lifeless visage of 
childhood, over which oftentimes the de- 
parted spirit seems to cast back a divine 

radiance. Indeed, to the stricken par- 

4 



26 Rachel Weeping for her Chi Id reft. 

ent's heart, it was a pardonable license 
in Charles Wesley to write : — 

" Ah, lovely appearance of death ! 

What sight upon earth is so fair ? 
Not all the gay pageants that breathe, 

Can with a dead body compare." 

And if, " O thou afflicted, tossed with 
tempest, and not comforted," if this 
yearning over thy lifeless darling bears 
thee oft to the grave which has re- 
ceived the fair form, no words of ours 
would restrain thee. There go, if so 
thou wilt, to scatter the fragrance of a 
scarred but ever-blooming affection, and 
weep over the unseen but ever precious 
one, " bone of thy bone and flesh of thy 
flesh." 

But here let there be a pause, a deep, 
calm pause, to write on memory's tablet, 
as with the point of a diamond, the truth 



Only the Casket. 27 

which gives title to this chapter, " Only 
the casket." 

Dear as that casket was, the grave 
holds it empty of the jewel That has 
been saved from the ruin, and is lodged 
forever beyond the peril of destruction 
or loss. The grave, indeed, has received 
much, too much, but over the best part 
of redeemed childhood it has no power. 
A cage crushed by a rude blow, with the 
bird flown to a safe retreat ; a bark 
foundered at sea, with all the crew res- 
cued ; a building shattered by fierce 
winds, with all the inmates escaped ; a 
coffer stolen by the midnight thief with 
all its treasures first withdrawn by the 
owner ; these are fit emblems of the 
body in becoming a prey to death. At 
the critical juncture God calls to him- 
self the living spirit, with all its powers 



28 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

and possibilities, as a skillful commander 
withdraws his army from a besieged for- 
tress when its destruction becomes in- 
evitable ; the fortress perishes, but the 
army escapes. So the soul's frail earth- 
works fall to ruin in death, but the soul 
itself finds refuge in the " house not 
made with hands, eternal in the heav- 
ens." The grave receives " only the 
casket." 



CHAPTER III. 

LOVE'S OFFERINGS AND ANXIETIES. 

Children are a heritage of the Lord. — Psalm cxxvii, 3. 

I loved them so, 
That when the Elder Shepherd of the fold 
Came, covered with storm, and pale and cold, 
And begged for one of my sweet lambs to hold, 

I bade him go. 

He claimed the pet — 
A little fondling thing, that to my breast 
Clung always, either in quiet or unrest — 
I thought of all my lambs I loved him best, 

And yet — and yet — 

I laid him down 
In those white, shrouded arms, with bitter tears, 
For some voice told me that, in after years, 
He should know naught of passion, grief, or fears, 

As I had known. — Anotiyinous. 

DOUBLE law of nature operates 
to make the children God has 
given us the objects of our tenderest 



30 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

care — our spontaneous love to them, 
and their natural helplessness. Parental 
love ! but most of all, a mother's love, 
who shall estimate it? 

" There is a feeling in the heart 
Of woman, which can have no part 
In man ; a self-devotedness, 
As victims round their idol press, 
And asking nothing, but to show 
How far their zeal and faith can go." 

This self-sacrificing love is drawn out 
from parent to child in its tenderest 
manifestations by the peculiar helpless- 
ness of the latter. If the dependence of 
human infancy is not without a parallel 
in the vast realms of nature, as to the 
fact, it is, at least, as to the term of its 
duration. While the young of dumb 
animals rise above their first condition 
of helplessness in a few days, or at most 
a few weeks, those of the human species 



Love's Offerings and Anxieties. 31 

require parental care for months, and 
even years. What a wide scope does 
this afford for the exercise of that ten- 
der, instinctive love, which so entwines 
itself around the new-born infant, and 
which delights in providing means and 
seeking opportunities to minister to its 
needs. It is this that supplies the best 
nourishment, the most approved cloth- 
ing, the purest air, the most careful 
handling, the best exercise, and the 
most entertaining toys. And when dan- 
ger comes, whether from threatened ac- 
cident, or sickness, how grandly does 
this love rise to the occasion and fulfill 
its mission ! A Greek poem of Leoni- 
das of Alexandria beautifully illustrates 
at once the promptness, wisdom, and 
boldness of a mother's love in seasons 
of danger : — 



32 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

" While on the cliff with calm delight she kneels, 

And the blue vales a thousand joys recall, 

See to the last, last verge her infant steals ! 

O fly — yet stir not, speak not, lest it fall. 

Far better thought, she lays her bosom bare, 

And the fond boy springs back to nestle there." 

Nor is this parental love less true 
when sickness comes. The most liberal 
expenditure of medical skill and tender 
nursing, of sleepless watchings and anx- 
ious tears, is not too good for the help- 
less sufferer. And when all these ten- 
der ministrations prove unavailing, and 
death ensues, this love, ever fertile in 
kindly offices, still ceases not. It seems 
to say to undertaker and friends, " Tread 
softly and handle gently our darling." 
Then follow the further proofs of it in 
the neat coffin, the becoming grave at- 
tire, the sweet flowers, the sad leave- 
taking, the fresh outburst of grief at the 



Love's Offerings and Anxieties. 33 

open grave, and the painful lingering 
there till the little earth-mound, in mute 
accents, tells that all is done which even 
the love of parenthood could do in car- 
ing for the mortal body. 

But presently that love rises to a 
higher plane. Having seen the casket 
laid away in its last resting-place, it 
busies itself with thoughts of the jewel. 
Without forgetting the body and its 
narrow inclosure, it now asks, What of 
the soul ? Whither has it gone ? And 
is it safe ? The heart goes out in 
searchings after a more definite answer 
to these questions. While accepting the 
truth that " children are a heritage of the 
Lord," hopefully in heaven as well as 
certainly on earth ; while even able to 
adopt, with varying confidence, the lan- 
guage of Job : "The Lord gave and the 



34 Rachel Weeping for Iter Childien. 

Lord hath taken away, blessed be the 
name of the Lord ;" still that anxious 
heart would know the grounds on which 
its faith may intelligently and steadily 
rest. Now, it may be, that faith is dis- 
turbed by a lingering surmise that the 
eternal weal of the buried one depended 
upon some mysterious decree of God, or, 
perhaps, upon some condition under pa- 
rental control which was either wholly 
neglected, or, at most, but imperfectly 
fulfilled. To these anxieties of a love 
that can never die, and that justly seeks 
repose from all its doubts, we would 
come bringing- the solace of divine coun- 
sels and promises. 



CHAPTER IV. 

QUESTIONINGS. 

Wherefore didst thou doubt? — Matt, xiv, 31. 
Why are ye troubled, and why do thoughts arise in 
your hearts ? " — Luke xxiv, 38. 

All the day long I listen to the singing 

Of the gay birds and winds among the trees ; 

But a sad under-strain is ever ringing 
A tale of death and its dread mysteries. 

— Mrs. Julia H. Scott. 

SIMPLE assurance, in general 
terms, of the safety of departed 
childhood, may not be sufficient to sat- 
isfy all minds. Some, from a natural 
proneness to doubt, and others from the 
influence of a wrong education, are given 
to needless questionings. Nor is this a 
new thing. More than once was the 



£>■ 



36 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

blessed Jesus obliged to rebuke the 
" doubts " and chide the anxious, half- 
unbelieving " thoughts " of his disciples. 
So here, perhaps, a father gives way to 
questionings concerning his glorified 
child, as doubting Thomas did concern- 
ing his risen Master. There a bereft 
mother may be repeating, in reference to 
the soul of her dear babe, what Mary at 
the sepulchre so sadly uttered concern- 
ing the body of her dear Saviour : 
" They have taken away the Lord out of 
the sepulchre, and we know not where 
they have laid him." 

The number of such parents we be- 
lieve to be small, yet on this account 
their mental troubles are none the less 
keen, nor are they any the less worthy 
of our sympathy and of the relief we 
would fain afford. 



Questionings. 37 

With some the occasion of doubt may 
be a wrong belief in regard to the effi- 
cacy of water baptism. Although this 
ordinance is solemnly enjoined in the 
word of God, it is not made essential to 
salvation even in believing adults, much 
less in children. This — to instance but 
one proof among many — is a plain de- 
duction from" the terms of our Lord's 
commission to his apostles : " He that 
believeth and is baptized shall be saved ; 
but he that believeth not shall be 
damned." While in the former clause 
baptism is joined with faith or believ- 
ing, seemingly as an equal condition of 
being saved, the latter clause shows that, 
though the neglect of faith inevitably 
exposes to damnation, the simple omis- 
sion of baotism does not. The evident 

i. 

teaching of the passage is, that faith is 



38 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

the essential condition of salvation, and 
baptism the incidental profession of that 
faith ; that believing with or without 
baptism secures salvation, while believ- 
ing not, without or with baptism, leads 
to damnation. 

It follows that baptism in itself is not 
a saving ordinance as to either adults or 
children. That, therefore, is a false the- 
ology, and cruel as it is false, which ex- 
cludes from the kingdom of heaven all 
unbaptized children dying in infancy. 
It is human superstition, not divine reve- 
lation, which invests this sacrament with 
a soul-saving charm, and consigns inno- 
cent childhood to eternal suffering for 
the neglect of it by thoughtless or unbe- 
lieving parents. God has provided an- 
other and a surer way of salvation for 
dying infancy, a way not in any measure 



Questionings. 39 

affected by the failures of those to whose 
guardianship it is intrusted. 

Mourning one, if happily your pre- 
cious babe was dedicated to God at the 
baptismal font, let a sense of fulfilled 
duty toward it and him comfort you ; if 
not, let no pang of doubt be added to 
your sorrow by the thought of a neglect 
for which the parent, and not the child, 
is held responsible. 

With others the doctrine of special 
election may be an occasion of painful 
questionings. The Bible, indeed, often 
speaks of election, but never of such an 
unconditional election as discriminates 
between one dying infant and another 
with regard to their future salvation. 
The saving election of all true Chris- 
tians takes place at their conversion, and 
is effected " through sanctification of the 



40 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

Spirit and belief of the truth," as St. 
Paul affirms ; but their final salvation is 
still conditional ; hence they are exhort- 
ed by another apostle to " give diligence 
to make their calling and election sure." 
As to children dying before responsible 
age, a broad, impartial provision has 
been made for their eternal blessedness, 
richly illustrating the truth that " God is 
no respecter of persons." Only admit 
that any one infant of all the race has 
been saved, the conclusion is inevitable 
that every other of the vast myriads who 
have died has also been saved. "Let 
the little ones come unto me," is the ten- 
der, universal invitation of Jesus to chil- 
dren living or dying. 

Therefore, O bereaved one, however 
assailed by temptation touching this 
question, banish from your vision the 



Question ings. 4 1 

frightful specter of your tender, unsin- 
ning child shut out of heaven by an ar- 
bitrary decree of God ; even dismiss 
from your thoughts the idea of such a 
possibility. And let it be dropped with 
a holy shudder from this discussion, as 
too horrible for a moment's considera- 
tion ! 

Another occasion of doubt with some 
may be the doctrine of total human 
depravity, otherwise called original or 
birth-sin. This is defined by Richard 
Watson as " that whereby our whole 
nature is corrupted, and rendered con- 
trary to the nature and law of God." * 
The Scriptures describe moral goodness 
and obedience as the pursuing of a 
straight or right line ; depravity is the 
turning aside out of that straight line. 

* "Biblical and Theological Dictionary," art. "Sin." 
6 



42 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

Or, as another well-known definition 
says : " It is the corruption of the na- 
ture of every man, that naturally is en- 
gendered of the offspring of Adam, 
whereby man is very far gone from 
original righteousness, and of his own 
nature inclined to evil, and that con- 
tinually." * However humiliating to 
natural pride, we are compelled to ac- 
cept this doctrine as true. To deny 
it would be to contradict the plain- 
est teachings of Scripture, and to disre- 
gard the most palpable facts of human 
history. " What is man, that he should 
be clean ? and he which is born of a 
woman, that he should be righteous ? " 
" How then can man be justified with 
God ? or how can he be clean that is born 

* Seventh Article of Religion of the Methodist Episco- 
pal Church. 



Questionings. 43 

of a woman ? " " Behold, I was shapen 
in iniquity ; and in sin did my mother 
conceive me." "The wicked are es- 
tranged from the womb : they go astray 
as soon as they be born, speaking lies." 
The whole history of the race illustrates 
and confirms these teachings of the writ- 
ten word. The case is put none too 
strongly by Dr. Watts in one of his fa- 
miliar hymns : — 

" Lord, we are vile, conceived in sin, 
And born unholy and unclean ; 
Sprung from the man whose guilty fall 
Corrupts his race, and taints us all. 

" Soon as we draw our infant breath, 
The seeds of sin grow up for death ; 
Thy law demands a perfect heart, 
But we're denied in every part." 

Is there a man, woman, or child, on 
heathen or Christian soil, in whose deep 



44 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

consciousness this humble confession has 
never found a response ? Ah, it is a 
stubborn fact, which no specious embel- 
lishments of human nature can efface, 
that while irresponsible childhood is in- 
nocent as to personal guilt, it is morally 
impure ; and coming into the world with 
the taint of sin upon it, that taint posi- 
tively unfits it for heaven without a 
moral renovation. " And there shall in 
no wise enter into it any thing that de- 
fileth ;" and we may add, any thing that 
is defiled, for only " the pure in heart 
shall see God." 

Among those whose eyes peruse these 
lines are there some who feel impelled 
to ask, If these things be so, wherein 
shall we comfort ourselves concerning 
our children ? If from Adam they in- 
herit a fallen, corrupt nature, unfitting 



Questionings. 45 

them for heaven ; if the doctrine of spe- 
cial election has no application to in- 
fancy as a basis of either fear or hope ; 
and if water baptism, however solemnly 
administered in the name of the holy 
trinity, possesses no saving virtue, on 
what sufficient ground can we assure 
ourselves of their felicity in death ? 
God himself has abundantly supplied the 
answer. The native defilement of infan- 
cy is fully met in the "abounding grace" 
of the Gospel, a grace which assumes its 
benignant sway at life's earliest dawn, 
accomplishing salvation in all dying in- 
fants without personal conditions, and 
assuring it to all who live on the one 
condition of personal faith in Christ. 
Unbelief alone, of which children are 
incapable, can hinder the saving success 
of this grace. How surely safe, there- 



46 RacJiel Weeping for Jier Children. 

fore, are they in life, and how certainly 
saved must they be in death ! 

There are questionings of another 
class which require notice — those relat- 
ing to the causes of death rather than 
its consequences. They take on the 
character of self-reproaches for a real 
or fancied absence of proper foresight, 
prompt attention, or wise discretion, 
whereby fatal results might possibly 
have been averted. Had a physician 
been called earlier, or had some other 
physician been employed ; had a closer 
attention been given to the case, or a 
change of air been sought ; or, in case of 
accident, had greater restraint or a strict- 
er caution been exercised, the sequel 
might have been quite different. These 
and various other surmises are but too 
ready to obtrude themselves within the 



Questionings. 47 

sacred precincts of the heart under be- 
reavement, and to insinuate the needless- 
ness of its deplored loss. And how often 
do these distressing surmises come when 
there is not the least occasion for them ! 
when the course pursued has been the 
very best, and when no other would have 
led to different results. 

But allowing that mistakes are now 
discovered, the avoidance of which might 
have averted death, it may still be asked, 
Were they not honestly and sincerely 
made ? 

Many things, viewed in the light of 
results, not unfrequently appear as mis- 
takes, which were unavoidable in the 
less perfect knowledge possessed at the 
time of their occurrence. But is this 
after-discovery a just occasion for self- 
reproach ? When Mary of Bethany 



48 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

anointed the head of Jesus with pre- 
cious spikenard, and wiped his tear-be- 
dewed feet with her own hair, was it not 
enough that he should say of her, " She 
hath done what she could ; she is come 
aforehand to anoint my body to the 
burying?" And who can doubt that 
the former part of this divine plaudit 
stands written in God's book of remem- 
brance to the credit of many a Mary 
now living, whose maternal watchings 
and weepings over suffering infancy, 
though designed for its recovery, were 
done, as the sequel proved, against the 
day of its burial. Wherefore, then, O 
self-accusing one, thy bitter complain- 
ings ? 

Having done what you could in the 
exercise of your best judgment and 
tenderest care, whatever shortcomings 



Questionings, 49 

or errors may now seem to confront 
you, resist the temptation which they 
so readily suggest, lest otherwise you 
sin against God, not less than render 
yourself a victim to needless self-in- 
flicted tortures of mind. For the very 
self-reproaches which too many nourish 
— quite innocently as they suppose — 
often resolve themselves into the ques- 
tion, Why did God suffer it to be 
thus ? Why not, by his special provi- 
dence, avert the dreaded result by pre- 
venting the human causes producing it ? 
Every self-accusation, therefore, after an 
honest endeavor, however imperfectly 
executed, to fill up the measure of 
your obligation, may contain in it the 
germ of a reproach against God himself. 
It is this sin which, in its ever-varying 
phases and degrees, calls forth the mer- 



50 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

ited rebuke of St. Paul when he so point- 
edly asks, " Shall the thing formed say to 
him that formed it, Why hast thou made 
me thus ? " 

" Blind unbelief is sure to err, 
And scan his work in vain ; 
God is his own interpreter, 
And he will make it plain." 

Still another and more delicate aspect 
of the subject demands attention. Is 
any reader of these pages constrained to 
say in regard to a dear child but newly 
buried what the brethren of Joseph con- 
fessed one to another in regard to him, 
"We are verily guilty concerning our 
brother?" Has there been conscious 
neglect, to speak of nothing worse ? 
Have parental responsibility and over- 
sight been loosely held, or delegated to 
others ? Has the care which only a 



Questionings. 5 1 

mother can give been left, at the cruel 
dictate of fashion, to faithless eye-serv- 
ants ? Or, on the other hand, have 
those delicate conveniences and com- 
forts which it belongs to the head of 
the family to supply been withheld from 
mother and child through dissipation or 
other sinful causes ? And does the rec- 
ollection of these things now add a poig- 
nancy to the grief of bereavement a 
thousand-fold more distressing than oth- 
erwise it would or could occasion ? Be 
it so. Yet, O suffering ones, despair 
not ! Only on the principle of divine 
forgiveness can any man living be justi- 
fied. " For all have sinned and come 
short of the glory of God." Turn to 
the one hundred and thirtieth psalm 
and find in it an expression of your 
own privilege and duty, and what may 



52 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

speedily become your hopeful experi- 
ence. Read especially the first, third, 
and fourth verses : " Out of the depths 
have I cried unto thee, O Lord. If 
thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O 
Lord, who shall stand ? But there is 
forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest 
be feared." Behold the only way of es- 
cape ! From the depths of mingled sor- 
row and remorse you have but to cry to 
God with a broken heart, a contrite 
spirit, and trusting soul ; and not more 
certainly did Jesus say to one and an- 
other during his earthly ministry, " Thy 
sins are all forgiven thee ; go in peace 
and sin no more," than he will pro- 
nounce upon you the same free and full 
pardon. 

As a little child, conscience-smitten for 
some offense against his dear mother, 



Questionings. 53 

flies to her embrace and buries his tear- 
ful face in her throbbing bosom, there to 
receive only smiles and kisses of forgiv- 
ing love, so you may fly to an embrace 
yet more tender, and pillow your aching 
heads upon a bosom yet more loving, 
there to be met with smiles of divine 
welcome, and words of gracious recon- 
ciliation. 




CHAPTER V. 

IT IS WELL. 

" Run now . . . and say unto her ... Is it well with 
the child? And she answered, It is well." — 2 Kings 
iv, 26. 

Aye ! it is well — 
Well with my lambs, and with their earthly guide ; 
There pleasant rivers wander they beside, 
Or strike sweet harps upon its silver tide — 
Aye ! it is well. — Anonymous. 

" Suffer the little children to come unto me, and for- 
bid them not ; for of such is the kingdom of God." 
— Mark x, 14. 

I take these little lambs, said he, 

And lay them in my breast ; 
Protection they shall find in me, 

In me be ever blest. 



Death may the bands of life unloose, 
But can't dissolve my love ; 

Millions of infant souls compose 
The family above. — Stennett. 



It is Well. 55 

tHE calm reply of the Shunammite 
woman to the prophet's question 
contains an assurance which all bereaved 
parents may confidently adopt as their 
own. As it was well with her dead 
child, so, in a higher sense than she 
probably comprehended, it is well with 
every departed child ; well, not only be- 
cause the body is freed from all suffer- 
ing, but also and especially, because " the 
spirit has returned to God who gave it." 
How much this latter statement implies 
we may not here pause to consider, but 
doubtless it means, both as to departed 
children and adult believers, all that 
Jesus taught when he said to the dying 
thief on the cross, " To-day shalt thou be 
with me in paradise;" and all that St. 
Paul implies in the passages, " Willing, 
rather to be absent from the body, and 



56 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

to be present with the Lord;" and, 
" Having a desire to depart and to be 
with Christ; which is far better." A state 
of conscious and great felicity is here de- 
scribed as belonging to the disembodied 
spirits of all " who die in the Lord ;" 
wherefore the voice from heaven which 
John heard, pronounced all such "blessed 
from henceforth." 

The complete scriptural ground of in- 
fant salvation is summed up in the beau- 
tiful words of Jesus : " For of such is the 
kingdom of God." This kingdom of God 
does not here mean the Church, but that 
divine economy of grace which underlies 
the Church on earth, and crowns it in 
heaven. A plain distinction is every- 
where preserved in the New Testament 
between the kingdom of God and the 
Church, so that the original word used 



It is Well. 57 

for the one is never translated by the 
other, nor could it be without manifest 
impropriety. The kingdom of God, to 
which unsinning childhood belongs, is 
far broader in its scope than the visible 
Church, so that however any branch of 
the Church may deny the right of in- 
fants to membership, the kingdom of 
God embraces them in its ample provis- 
ion. The phrase " of such," plainly has 
the sense of for such, in regard to such, 
on account of such, this often being the 
force of the Greek genitive here used ; 
hence for children, not less than for 
adults, is the Gospel provision made. 
The disciples rebuked those who brought 
their children to Jesus, as though they 
were too young or too insignificant to 
have any lot or part in his gospel king- 
dom. " But when Jesus saw it, he was 

8 



58 Rachel Weeping for her CJiildren. 

much displeased, and said unto them, 
Suffer the little children to come unto 
me, and forbid them not ; for of such is 
the kingdom of God." As if he had 
said, They are included in that gracious 
economy which I am come to establish, 
and are entitled to all its rich benefits ; 
therefore bring them to me for my rec- 
ognition and blessing as subjects of this 
my gospel kingdom. 

And so it is every-where in Scripture 
assumed that children stand on the same 
footing of redemption with adults, there 
being this difference in their favor — that 
while adults, having committed actual 
sin, can claim eternal life, here or here- 
after, only on the ground of simple di- 
vine mercy through Christ, unsinning 
infants, dying as such, are entitled to 
the same eternal life, through the same 



It is Well. 59 

Mediator, on the ground of even-handed 
justice also. God himself issues the 
challenge, " Are not my ways equal ? " 
His equal justice, therefore, combines 
with his tender love to effect the regen- 
eration and sanctification of all dying 
infants, and so secure to them an eternal 
felicity of existence in heaven. And let 
it be noted that this felicity of being, 
through the mingled holiness and good- 
ness of God, supplies an infinite gain to 
dying childhood over that simple non- 
existence, or that early annihilation of 
being, which must have been the plain 
demand of unmixed justice. That jus- 
tice, after Adam's disobedience and fall, 
could not do otherwise than leave his 
possible progeny unborn, or, allowing 
their birth, strike them at once out of 
being ; or, suffering them to come into 



60 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

the world with depraved natures, and 
to die before attaining responsible age, 
it must provide for their eternal well- 
being. This has been accomplished in 
a manner and measure both to honor 
the justice and magnify the grace of 
God. 

As to living children, the case is dif- 
ferent. No law of divine justice de- 
mands their present actual regeneration ; 
but the eternal rule of equity does re- 
quire that they shall be surrounded by 
all such remedial influences as consti- 
tute a full offset to their naturally sin- 
ful condition. This has been amply 
secured in the blessed scheme of re- 
demption. Nay more, grace has abound- 
ed to give a preponderance to these 
remedial influences, so that children 
come into the world under the gospel 



It is Well 6 1 

economy, holding a vantage ground 
quite above a simple balancing of the 
moral scales. Is not this plainly as- 
sumed in passages like these : " Out 
of the mouth of babes and sucklings 
hast thou ordained strength." " Pro- 
voke not your children to wrath, but 
bring them up in the nurture and ad- 
monition of the Lord." 

But the language of Jesus is the one 
passage which, above all others, expresses 
his loving interest in "little children," and 
their favorable relation to him. The 
scene which drew forth those tender 
words, if not the grandest, was at least 
among the most touching of his varied 
life, furnishing at once to the preacher 
and historian, the poet and painter, the 
richest material for use in their respect- 
ive lines. When those fond Judean 



62 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

mothers pressed about him, bearing their 
little ones, and, with extended hands, of- 
fered them for his blessing, how warm 
was the welcome he gave them ! And 
when, through mingled ignorance and 
selfishness, the disciples sought to re- 
strain them, he emphasized that wel- 
come in the memorable words, " Suffer 
the little children to come unto me, and 
forbid them not ; for of such is the king- 
dom of God." Belong not these words 
to this age as to that ? To this land as 
to that ? Ever welcome, and every- 
where welcome, 

" Are the jewels, precious jewels, 
His loved and his own." 

Let fond mothers and devoted fathers 
still offer their children to Jesus in an 
early consecration, by prayer, by bap- 



It is Well. 63 

tism, by Christian nurture, the same 
smile will greet them, the same blessing 
enrich them. 

But will he do less for them " out of 
the body " than in ? 

It cannot be. When, therefore, the 
parents of children sweet as those of 
Palestine, make a full offering of them 
to Jesus ; when having cared for them 
in health and watched over them in sick- 
ness, soothing their pains, fanning their 
fevered brows, and moistening their 
burning lips; when having fasted, and 
wept, and prayed to avert the dreaded 
calamity, they see the flush of disease 
followed by the pallor of approaching 
death, and hear some angel voice whis- 
pering in their ear, "The Master'is come, 
and calleth for thee ;" and when those 
parents, though bleeding at every pore 



64 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

of their wounded affection, are enabled 
to respond, 

" O Saviour, all we have and are 
Shall be forever thine " — 

surely, then, the welcome of earth rises 
with even a warmer and richer glow into 
the welcome of heaven ! 

Nor is it a welcome of words only. If 
we may conceive of the earthly scene in 
all its better features, as a type of the 
heavenly, there is also the welcome of a 
tender touch, and of a precious benedic- 
tion : " And they brought young children 
to him, that he should touch them." 
How gentle was the hand he laid upon 
their innocent heads ! And who can es- 
timate the spirit-thrill which the tender 
touch of Jesus must impart to glorified 
childhood ? When, eighteen hundred 
years ago, " he took them up in his 



It is Well. 65 

arms," did he not also press them to his 
bosom ? Precious fulfillment of the an- 
cient prediction, " He shall gather the 
lambs with his arm, and carry them in 
his bosom." But even a higher and 
richer fulfillment is given to it when 
" the good Shepherd " welcomes his little 
lambs to glory, and folds them forever 
with gentle arms to his loving heart ! 

And think what a blessing it was 
which Jesus added to all these other 
tokens. He "put his hands upon them, 
and blessed them." Was not that " the 
blessing of the Lord " described by Solo- 
mon, which " maketh rich, and. he addeth 
no sorrow with it ? " 

It was more than a father's blessing 

upon his firstborn, as in the ancient 

time ; it was the blessing of the elder 

brother, under the father's sanction, 
9 



66 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

waiving his own exclusive rights, and 
taking in all the little ones of the family 
to be sharers with him of the inherit- 
ance. By far the greater part of that 
inheritance is in heaven, not on earth. 
Here it is an inheritance of grace, there 
an inheritance of glory. 

How small a portion is realized here 
even by those of full age, and no portion 
consciously by those who die in child- 
hood. Yet they are heirs, and " the 
promise of eternal inheritance," as St. 
Paul calls it in the ninth chapter of 
Hebrews, can never fail, unless it be 
forfeited by. a willful rejection ; but of 
this infants are not capable. It follows 
that the blessing of the elder brother 
bridges over death, and repeats itself in 
the higher and grander circumstances of 
a heavenly heirship. That blessing of 



It is Well. 67 

blessings awaits their early coming, and 
beatifies them forever with its undying 
"All hail!" 

O, then, " ye disconsolate," dry up 
your tears, dismiss your sadness, part 
with your last lingering doubt ; your 
absent ones are more than safe — " It 
is well." 



CHAPTER VI. 

NOT LOST, BUT GONE BEFORE. 

But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I 
bring him back again ? I shall go to him, but he shall 
not return to me." — 2 Sam. xii, 23. 

I know his face is hid 

Under the coffin lid ; 
Closed are his eyes ; cold is his forehead fair ; 

My hand that marble felt ; 

O'er it in prayer I knelt ; 
Yet my heart whispers that — he is not there ! 

Not there ! — Where then is he ? 

The form I used to see 
Was but the raiment that he used to wear ; 

The grave that now doth press 

Upon that cast-off dress 
Is but his wardrobe locked ; he is not there ! 

He lives ! — In all the past 

He lives ; nor, to the last, 
Of seeing him again will I despair ; 

In dreams I see him now ; 

And, on his angel brow, 
I see it written, " Thou shalt see me there." 

— John Pierpont. 



Not Lost, but Gone Before. 69 

^^^HEN David, king of Israel, "be- 
^ sought God " for his sick child, 
" fasted and wept," and " lay all night 
upon the earth," he but did that which 
must remind all bereaved parents of 
their own intense anxiety and grief un- 
der like circumstances. Their deep sym- 
pathy with suffering they could not re- 
lieve ; their agonizing suspense as to the 
result, and the indescribable pangs of 
final separation — these were some of the 
bitter ingredients which then filled the 
cup of their sorrow. And O, when all 
was over, the childish heart having 
ceased to throb, the tiny hands lying 
motionless, never to stir again, and the 
innocent eyes closed in the long, deep 
sleep of death, was it not then blessed to 
catch the spirit of the royal psalmist, and 
in calm resignation and hope to utter the 



70 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

tender words, " I shall go to him, but he 
shall not return to me." 

Adopting this double prophecy as our 
own, it stands to us in both a sad and 
joyful aspect : sad, as portraying our 
own certain mortality ; sad, too, as in- 
dicating the long, unbroken separation 
between us and the buried forms of 
loved ones ; but joyful as fixing their 
disembodied spirits in a happy, undis- 
turbed repose with Jesus and the glori- 
fied ; joyful, also, as foreshadowing a 
blessed reunion with them when our 
own fleeting day of life is past. 

The theme of the present chapter al- 
lures us from the dark, sorrowful side of 
this picture to the luminous, joyful side : 
" Not lost, but gone before." Consoling 
thought ! " I shall go to him, but he 
shall not return to me." Why not re- 



Not Lost, but Gone Before. 71 

turn? Not only because the grave — 
described by the poet as a "locked ward- 
robe " — securely holds the body, but be- 
cause the spirit has found an abiding 
home in the " house not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens." This is 
presented to us by David only in dim 
outline, but is clearly revealed in other 
and later portions of God's word. The 
home of disembodied childhood we may 
not attempt to locate, only as the Bi- 
ble fixes it with Jesus and the angels. 
Keeping within the limits of orthodox 
theology, we can conceive of but one of 
three places as the receptacle of depart- 
ed human spirits — heaven or hell, or 
some place intermediate between the 
two. To admit that any infant spirit 
may be consigned to the " perdition of 
ungodly men," is a supposition too mon- 



72 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

strous to be entertained for a moment. 
Both the mercy and justice of God for- 
bid it. And whatever may be said of an 
intermediate state between death and the 
resurrection, we are quite sure that the 
New Testament, rightly interpreted, gives 
no countenance to the theory of an in- 
termediate place between earth and 
heaven. St. Paul, in Ephesians ii, 15, 
divides the family of God into two 
branches, and two only, the one on 
earth, the other in heaven : " Of whom 
the whole family in heaven and earth is 
named." But if there is a third branch 
intermediate between these two, would 
he not have been likely to speak of it ? 

The steps by which this theory may 
be disproved are very few and simple. 
And in disproving it, the true doctrine, 
namely, that saints and infants pass at 



Not Lost, but Gone Before. 73 

death immediately into heaven, will be- 
come firmly established. The steps are 
three : — 

1. Heaven is where God, in the center 
of his being, if we may so speak, eter- 
nally dwells — where he reigns forever 
upon the throne of his power and glory. 
" Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my 
throne, and the earth is my footstool." 
" Swear not at all ; neither by heaven ; 
for it is God's throne : nor by the earth ; 
for it is his footstool." 

2. When Jesus left the earth he re- 
turned to his Father in heaven. Thus 
at his ascension the two angels that 
appeared to the disciples said, " Ye men 
of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up in- 
to heaven ? this same Jesus, which is 
taken up from you into heaven, shall so 

come in like manner as ye have seen 
10 



74 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

him go into heaven." That this was the 
third or highest heaven, the place of 
Gods peculiar abode, is plain from the 
terms used by our Lord in predicting his 
ascension. At John xvi, 28 he says, " I 
came forth from the Father, ■ and am 
come into the world : again, I leave the 
world, and go to the Father." See also 
chapter xiii, 1, 3. St. Paul speaks of him 
as "sitting on the right hand of God;" 
as having " sat down on the right hand 
of the Majesty on high;" as "set on the 
right hand of the throne of the Majesty 
in the heavens;" as being entered "into 
heaven itself, now to appear in the pres- 
ence of God for us;" and as being "set 
down at the right hand of the throne 
of God." 

Jesus also, after his ascension, in his 
vision to John, addresses one of the 



Not Lost, but Gone Before. 75 

seven Churches of Asia in the words, 
11 To him that overcometh will I grant 
to sit with -me in my throne, even as I 
also overcame, and am set down with my 
Father in his throne." 

3. To these two steps we add a third, 
namely, that the spirits of all the good 
go at death to dwell with Jesus. 

This accords with the promise made 
by him to his disciples in the fourteenth 
chapter of John : " I go to prepare a 
place for you. And ... I will come again, 
and receive you unto myself, that where 
I am, there ye may be also." If it be 
said that this refers to his coming at the 
last judgment, and not at the period of 
death, the answer is, that the Greek 
word almost always employed for his 
second coming is not the word here 
used, the latter being a word of much 



y6 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

broader signification than the former. 
It is variously applied to his first coming, 
as "I am not come of myself;" to his 
coming in spiritual influence to the be- 
liever's heart, as " We will come unto 
him, and make our abode with him ;" to 
his coming in his post-ascension Church 
kingdom, as, " There be some standing 
here, which shall not taste of death, till 
they see the Son of man coming in his 
kingdom ;" to his coming in great moral 
and political conflicts, as, " Behold, I come 
as a thief," Rev. xvi, 15; and, finally, to 
his coming in death, as, " Be ye therefore 
ready also : for the Son of man cometh 
at an hour when ye think not." Com- 
pare Matt, xxiv, 44, and Mark xiii, 35, 36, 
passages which plainly teach the double 
coming of Christ in death and final judg- 
ment. " For the individual death is the 



Not Lost, but Gone Before. yy 

virtual coming of the Son of man. . . . 
Death is simply a transition into the 
world where retribution reigns, and 
where the virtual judgment throne of 
Christ is in spirit constantly in session."* 
We refer to one other passage, (John 
xxi, 22 :) "Jesus saith unto him, [Peter,] 
If I will that he [John] tarry till I come, 
what is that to thee?" To which we 
append a part of the valuable note of 
Dr. Whedon : " If the word ' come ' be 
taken in the sense of John xiv, 3, then 
the sentence is that John shall not, like 
Peter, be bound and violently slain ; but 
shall quietly and peacefully tarry until 
the Lord shall please to come at the 
hour of death to take him to himself." 

But there are other texts which plainly 
declare the immediate return at death of 

*Whedon's " Commentary." 



78 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

every prepared soul to Jesus. " But he, 
[Stephen,] being full of the Holy Ghost, 
looked up steadfastly into heaven, and 
saw the glory of God, and Jesus stand- 
ing on the right hand of God. . . . And 
they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, 
and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my 
spirit." " We are confident, I say, and 
willing rather to be absent from the 
body, and to be present with the Lord." 
" For I am in a strait betwixt two, hav- 
ing a desire to depart, and be with 
Christ ; which is far better." " Who died 
for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we 
should live together with him." " And 
Jesus said unto him, [the dying thiefj 
Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt 
thou be with me in paradise." 

This last passage is claimed by the 
advocates of an intermediate place as 



Not Lost, but Gone Before. 79 

favoring their theory ; but the claim is 
wholly groundless. For the spirit of 
Jesus returned at death to his Father, as 
he had predicted, (John xvi, 16,) "A lit- 
tle while, and ye shall not see me : and 
again, a little while, and ye shall see me, 
because I go to the Father," evidently 
referring to the interval between his 
death and resurrection. The paradise, 
therefore, which he promised to the 
dying thief that day must have been 
heaven, the place of his Fathers imme- 
diate presence. This is put beyond 
doubt by the fact that in other passages 
paradise and heaven are used as inter- 
changeable terms. Thus in the twelfth 
chapter of 2 Corinthians St. Paul says, 
" I knew a man in Christ above fourteen 
years ago, whether in the body I cannot 
tell, or whether out of the body I cannot 



80 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

tell ; God knoweth : such a one caught 
up to the third heaven. And I knew 
such a man . . . how that he was caught up 
into paradise." Can any one doubt that 
the apostle here identifies paradise with 
the third heaven, the highest heaven in 
God's universe, his own peculiar abode ? 
So in Rev. ii, 7, we are told that " the 
tree of life" stands " in the midst of the 
paradise of God;" and in Rev. xxii, 1, 2, 
it is declared that the same tree of life 
stands " on either side of the river ... of 
water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding 
out of the throne of God and of the 
Lamb." What, then, is paradise but 
heaven itself, the eternal dwelling-place 
of God and Christ ? 

The only remaining passage that needs 
to be cited is that in which the phrase 
"Abraham's bosom" occurs. Luke xvi, 22. 



Not Lost, but Gone Before. 81 

Much stress has been laid upon this by 
the advocates of an intermediate place. 
But if all the saints go to Jesus when 
they die, and he lives with his Father 
in heaven, surely Abraham, who was pre- 
eminent as a saint, would not have been 
left at his death in some lower sphere ; 
so that " Abraham's bosom," as to its 
locality, is plainly identical with heaven 
itself. 

" There was no name which conveyed 
to the Jews the same associations as that 
of Abraham. As undoubtedly he was in 
the highest state of felicity of which de- 
parted spirits are capable, to be with 
Abraham implied the enjoyment of the 
same felicity ; and to be in Abraham's 
bosom, meant to be in repose and hap- 
piness with him." * This phrase, there- 

* M'Clintock and Strong's " Cyclopaedia." 
11 



82 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

fore, was but another form of expression 
for the highest enjoyment of heaven. 

From all that has been written, what 
are the plain inferences ? One is that 
the soul does not sleep with the body in 
death. If the soul of Paul could live 
" out of the body," as we have seen was 
the fact, so may the soul of every other 
saint, and of every infant. If the decla- 
ration of Christ, that " God is not a God 
of the dead but of the living, for all live 
unto him," proved Abraham and Isaac 
and Jacob to be alive as to their souls, 
though their bodies had been long dead, 
so it proves the souls of all their spirit- 
ual children to be alive after the death 
of their bodies. If the appearance of 
Moses, without a physical resurrection — 
of which there is no hint — on the mount 
of transfiguration with Elijah and Jesus, 



Not Lost, hit Gone Before. 83 

showed the living conscious existence of 
his soul apart from his dead body, so it 
presumes the similar existence of all pure 
souls, whether adult or infant, after the 
death of their bodies. 

But, as we have before proved, they 
more than simply live ; they live with 
Christ and God, a fact which forever 
sweeps away the gloomy doctrine of the 
soul's unconscious sleep in the grave. 

This fact also equally disproves the 
notion that the spirits of the dead lin- 
ger about the graves of their bodies. It 
might do for Socrates and other heathen 
sages to hold this fancy, but Christians 
have been taught better things. Gentle 
mourner, are you tempted to indulge the 
fancy ? Tempted to seek beneath the 
willow where your dear ones lie, a lone- 
ly fellowship with their spirits ? Banish 



84 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

the thought ! Is it not enough that the 
sacred inclosure within which you linger 
to weep has been consecrated by their 
bodies ? Would you have their spirits 
also linger and abide there ? " The 
place is so cold and lonely. The mid- 
night winds sigh so dolefully there. 
How dreadful in the dead of night is 
the dreary and dreamless silence ! The 
snow lies so cold upon the grave, and 
fiercer than even the cutting anguish of 

o o 

your bereaved heart are the wintry 
storms that rave, and drift, and whirl 
around that monumental marble. Do 
you then wish them there — your sainted 
dead ? No, no. They are not there ; it 
is only inanimate mortality. ... In hap- 
pier society than in the city of the dead 
they live, to sweeter sounds they listen, 
to the music of angelic choirs they bend 



Not Lost, but Gone Before. 85 

an enraptured ear. In genial and storm- 
less climes they have found a home. 

' Far from this world of toil and strife 
They're present with the Lord.' " * 

Still another inference is authorized, 
namely, that the departed spirits of be- 
lievers and infants, once in heaven, do 
not return to earth. Already have we 
seen how broadly the psalmist affirmed 
this concerning his dead child : " I shall 
go to him, but he shall not return to 
me." In keeping with this, Job wrote, 
" When a few years are come I shall go 
the way whence I shall not return." But 
we need not pause to argue the point. 
Having shown that the spirits of all the 
good, including children, depart at death 
to " be with Christ," it must devolve on 
those who assert their frequent or occa- 

* Harbaugh's " Sainted Dead." 



86 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

sional return to earth, to prove what 
they assert. It is enough for us to trace 
them away from earth, and to pursue 
them by faith to their home in heaven. 
Who shall tear them away from that 
home and bring them back to revisit 
the scenes of their mortal probation ? 
That they shall return at the second 
coming of Christ to re-inhabit their 
newly-risen bodies is a blessed doctrine 
of Scripture ; but till then there is not 
the slightest authority for expecting any 
common return of human spirits. " The 
most that can be made of the several 
apparitions mentioned in the Bible is, 
that, from first to last, two spirits of the 
departed (Samuel and Moses) have re- 
turned to earth ; and that one entire 
man, soul and body, (Elijah,) has also 
returned ; three cases in over fifteen 



Not Lost, but Gone Before. 87 

centuries ! Does this seem to favor the 
great familiarity between the living and 
the dead ? Do not these very excep- 
tions confirm the doctrine of general 
non-intercourse ? All these cases are 
evidently set forth as miracles, and they 
no more prove that departed spirits gen- 
erally have access to the living of earth 
than the resurrection of Lazarus after 
four days proves that it is a law of na- 
ture that all men shall come to life after 
they have been dead four days. The 
very idea of a miracle requires that the 
general law should be violated or de- 
parted from ; so the miraculous appear- 
ances of one or two departed spirits of 
the dead would only go to establish it as 
a general law that the dead cannot re- 
turn to earth."* 

*" Spirit Rapping Unvailed," by H. Mattison, p. 38. 



88 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

Yet how many cherish the fancy that 
their departed children or other friends 
become guardian angels to them during 
all their subsequent life. Under this 
fancy they see them in vision by day, 
and talk to them in dreams by night. 
The writer last quoted tersely says, 
" This belief is founded not only upon 
the virtual affirmation, (Heb. i, 14,) 'Are 
they not all ministering spirits, sent forth 
to minister for them who shall be heirs 
of salvation?' but upon numerous in- 
stances on record in which angels have 
assisted and defended the people of God. 
But the question is, Who or what are 
these angels ? Are they the spirits of 
our friends, whose bodies we have bur- 
ied, or are they a distinct and higher 
order of beings ? A good poet but poor 
theologian has said : — 



Not Lost, but Gone Before. 89 

' When the partition walls decay, 
Men emerge angels from their clay.' 

And another, a poetess of brilliant fancy, 
but of doubtful logic and theology, has 
said : — 

' It is a beautiful belief, 

That ever round our head 
Are hovering, on viewless wings, 

The spirits of the dead.' 

But however beautiful this belief may be 
as a poetic image, it lacks one essential 
element of beauty, and that is truth. 
Spirits may hover around the pathway 
of the righteous, but they are not the 
spirits of the dead. On the contrary, 
the spirits or angels of the Bible are a 
distinct and higher order of intelli- 
gences." 

Pensive mourner, thou art far better 
guarded by these strong-handed angels 

of God than thou couldst be by the ten- 
12 



90 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

der ones that have left thee. And is not 
theirs a far better lot with Jesus in his 
" Father's house of many mansions," than 
it could be along life's damp and devious 
ways, which thou art still treading ? O 
call them not back to earth ! Bid them 
abide with Jesus. Is not his bosom 
softer than thine ? his smile sweeter 
than thine ? his care more tender than 
thine ? As thou lovest them, disturb 
not, even in fancy, their blessed eternal 
repose. 

" Safe in the arms of Jesus," 

let no selfish longings for their compan- 
ionship snatch them from those loving 
arms, and drag them down again to this 
rude world, for which God saw they were 
too tender and pure. 

Say not, the writer can know nothing 
of the deep yearnings of a parent's heart 



Not Lost, but Gone Befote. 91 

robbed of its child-idols by the hand of 
death, else he would encourage rather 
than condemn the fancy, if fancy it be, 
that they flit back to nestle unseen in 
the bosom that once nurtured them, and 
whisper again in the ears that heard 
their first lispings. Judge not thus has- 
tily ; these pages are but the outpour- 
ings of his own experience. Indulge a 
father's sad reminiscences. Overleaping 
an interval of almost twenty- five years, 
his then only child rises in vision before 
him, fair as the fairest of human forms, 
the joy of his heart and delight of his 
eyes, a precious daughter, on whom four 
and a half summers had impressed their 
loveliest tints, and expended their sweet- 
est perfumes. She clung the last to him 
when he left, and was the first to greet 
him with her cherub smiles when he 



92 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

returned. Her little life was bound with 
his. Once, when disease had marked 
her for a victim, though he knew it not, 
the tender kisses of a brief separation 
were exchanged, and he bade her a fa- 
ther's good-by. But a few hours passed 
when a telegram summoned his return, 
not to receive the accustomed smile and 
kiss, but to see her quivering in every 
limb and muscle of her delicate frame 
with terrible convulsions of seven long 
hours' duration. A fatal brain fever had 
insidiously lighted up its all-consuming 
fires, and for twenty-three sad and 
weary days they fed upon her precious 
life till all was gone. Hushed is that 
whispering voice, closed those death- 
dimmed eyes, motionless those agitated 
limbs, undisturbed that fluttering heart. 
11 So he giveth his beloved sleep." 



Not Lost, but Gone Before. 93 

" The languishing head is at rest ; 
Its aching and thinking are o'er ; 
The quiet immovable breast 

Is heaved by affliction no more." 

We wept, but smiles broke through 
the weeping as we remembered the 
promise, " He shall gather the lambs 
with his arm, and carry them in his 
bosom." Calmly we said, Let the grave 
take the tenantless body, though so 
lovely even in death, since the good 
Shepherd has gathered to himself the 
gentle spirit to bear it forever in his 
own soft bosom ! Thus we felt, and so 
we reasoned amid our mingled grief and 
joy. Then our consoling faith-vision 
found utterance in the brief lines, — 

I saw the morning dew-drop 
Sparkling on leaf and flower, 

But soon exhaled by sunbeams 
It sparkled but an hour. 



94 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

At length came rain ; then rainbow, 

Gilding the western sky ; 
I looked, and saw the dew-drop 

Brightly reset on high. 

Thus sparkled once our Fannie 
Beneath life's morning sun ; 

But now exhaled to heaven, 
Her glory is begun. 

All through the long years that have 
since passed the one thought that has 
comforted us most has been, not that 
her spirit constantly hovers about us in 
life's alternate sunshine and storm, or 
revisits us at longer or shorter intervals ; 
but that, having once swept " through 
the gates, washed in the blood of the 
Lamb," that spirit is shut in with Jesus, 
" there forever to abide." 

When, in later years, another sad be- 
reavement came to us in the death of a 
lovely twin daughter, three summers old, 



Not Lost, but Gone Before. 95 

the same thought gave a silver lining to 
the cloud which cast its dark shadow 
over our home. And now, as memory 
recalls these absent ones, we love to 
think of them, not as guardian angels 
in feeble miniature, but as early-ripened 
sheaves, garnered forever in the " build- 
ing of God ;" as " heirs of God, and joint 
heirs with Christ," who, having suffered 
with him on earth, are glorified with him 
in heaven. 

Finally, there comes the blessed 
thought of an eternal reunion with our 
cherished dead. To this our present 
topic gratefully points, " Not lost, but 
gone before ;" and, if gone before, we 
are but following after to overtake and 
rejoin them at the end of the shortening 
journey. Yet more distinctly is it fore- 
shadowed in the golden text, " I shall go 



g6 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

to him, but he shall not return to me." 
In earthly reunions it is common for the 
children to return to the homestead and 
receive the greetings of loved and loving 
parents, but here the order is reversed ; 
the glorified children are to be the 
hosts, with their newly-arrived parents 
for guests. How joyful will be the mu- 
tual greetings ! And better still, the 
place of reunion is to be the " house 
not made with hands, eternal in the 
heavens;" so giving assurance that these 
jubilant greetings shall be forever un- 
marred by even the thought of sep- 
aration : — 

" Who meet on that eternal shore 
Shall never part again." 

Impatient mourner, check the fond 
wish that would transfer the longed-for 
reunion from heaven to earth. " It is 



Not Lost, but Gone Before. 97 

good that a man both hope and quietly 
wait for the salvation of the Lord." 

To call thy loved ones back, were it 
possible, and lavish upon them again all 
the warm caresses of a parent's love, 
would be to enjoy but a momentary 
bliss. The withering grass and fading 
flowers, the sighing winds and rustling 
leaves, proclaim that here " there is none 
abiding." And so, could they come back 
to thee a thousand times, as many times 
must they again return, leaving thy heart 
more deeply lacerated at each successive 
parting. His plan is best who says, 
" They shall not be ashamed that wait 
for me " — a declaration as true to-day as 
in the ancient time. 

" But thou art gone ! not lost, but flown ! 

Shall I then ask thee back, my own ? 

Back — and leave thy spirit's brightness ? 

Back — and leave thy robes of whiteness ? 
13 



98 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

Back — and leave thine angel mold ? 
Back — and leave those streets of gold ? 
Back — and leave the Lamb who feeds thee ? 
Back — from founts to which he leads thee ? 
Back — and leave thy heavenly Father ? 
Back — to earth and sin ? — Nay ; rather 
Would I live in solitude ! 
I would not ask thee if I could ; 
But patient wait the high decree 
That calls my spirit home to thee." 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE MORNING COMETH. 
I am the resurrection and the life. — Joh?i xi, 15. 

Nature repeats the tale each year, 

She feels Thy touch through countless springs, 
And, rising from her wintry bier, 

Throws off her grave-clothes, lives, and sings. 

And when Thy touch through earth shall thrill 
This bier whereon our race is laid, 

And, for the first time standing still, 
The long procession of the dead 

At Thy " Arise ! " shall wake from clay, 
Young, deathless, freed from every stain ; 

When Thy " Weep not ! " shall wipe away 
Tears that shall never come again ; 

When the strong chains of death are burst, 
And lips long dumb begin to speak, 

What name will each then utter first ? 
What music shall that silence break ? 

— Mrs. Charles. 



ioo Rachel Weeping for Jier Children. 

tHE appalling verdict of infidelity, 
" Death is an eternal sleep," finds 
no sympathy either in the instincts or 
the education of those for whom these 
pages are written. 

As the doting father and loving moth- 
er commit to the grave the beautiful clay 
of their little one, there comes up from 
the deep recesses of their being a gen- 
tle voice that whispers, "After the night 
cometh the morning," while the stronger 
voice of revelation confirms these whis- 
perings of nature in the bold proclama- 
tion, " I am the resurrection and the 
life." Thus the two great volumes 
which God has given for man's guid- 
ance unite in teaching the doctrine of 
a future resurrection. 

Opening the book of nature, we not 
only see the literal night of darkness 



The Morning Cometh. ioi 

followed by the day, but the long and 
dreary night of winter succeeded by the 
welcome spring-time. In a climate like 
ours, so bare of verdure is the earth, and 
so apparently lifeless are the trees dur- 
ing the winter months, that when the 
spring returns, covering the one with its 
green carpet, and clothing the others 
with foliage and flowers and fruits, it 
seems as if a new creation had taken 
place. Experience, indeed, and the aid 
of the microscope, enable us to discover 
evidences of vitality where, to common 
observation, nature seems bound in icy 
fetters. Yet without such aids all the 
developments of spring would seem to 
be made on the bosom of death. Who, 
by looking at the seed, could once in a 
thousand times predict the character of 
the plant that would spring from it, or 



102 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

trace out any analogy between them ? 
Yet how easily are they unfolded when 
spring applies to the vegetable world 
her transmuting touch. 

But the changes among animals which 
spring develops are still more striking. 
Many that have lain during the winter 
in a state of torpidity, hardly to be dis- 
tinguished from death, begin to show 
signs of returning vitality, and soon as- 
sume the whole activity of their natures. 
Enveloped in his silken shroud, the 
chrysalis has passed the winter months 
in some obscure spot, but in the vernal 
season it bursts forth from its prison en- 
dowed with new life and beauty. It en- 
tered its narrow tomb an unsightly worm, 
but it comes forth a perfect insect, with 
splendid colors and strong wings, to pass 
its appointed season of activity and en- 



The Morning Cometh. 103 

joyment. Beautiful emblems of the fu- 
ture human resurrection ! Like the sad- 
ness which we experience when familiar 
forms of the vegetable world fade and 
perish under the touch of autumnal 
frosts, and when the birds of the field 
and the woods utter their solitary fare- 
well notes, is the deeper sadness we feel 
when the lovelier forms of childhood 
fade under the touch of disease, and its 
sweeter warble is hushed in the silence 
of death. And shall the departed forms 
of nature — the grasses, and plants, and 
shrubs, and trees — come back with each 
opening spring, clad in new attire, yet 
identically the same, awakening delight- 
ful reminiscences and anticipations, and 
no coming spring-time ever bring back 
the fairer forms of departed childhood ? 
Shall the robin's cheerful song, the clear 



104 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

note of the lark, the soft tone of the 
bluebird, the twitter of the swallow, and 
the cooing of the dove, be awakened by 
the earliest dawn of spring, and yet the 
richer cadences of childhood's voice, now 
silent, never be awakened to fall again 
on familiar ears ? 

As is the emblem, so will be the real- 
ity. In the coming spring-time of the 
world s history, the vaults and the sepul- 
chres, the graveyards and the cemeteries, 
the battle-fields and the oceans, shall de- 
liver up their unnumbered multitudes of 
human tenants, clothed with fresh beauty 
and flushing with immortal life, yet in- 
stantly recognized as well-remembered 
and endeared forms. For each resurrec- 
tion body will possess a specific individ- 
ual identity ; and just as we are now able 
in each returning spring to recognize the 



The Morning Cometh. 105 

plants and animals emerging from the 
grave of winter by their specific identity 
preserved through all its changes and 
rigors, so by the same law shall we be 
able at the resurrection to distinguish 
those whom we have known and loved 
on earth. St. Paul makes an appeal to 
this law as a part of his sublime argu- 
ment in the fifteenth chapter of First 
Corinthians: "But God giveth it a body 
as it hath pleased him, and to every seed 
his own body;" and then he applies this 
law to the subject in hand by presently 
adding : " So also is the resurrection of 
the dead. It is sown in corruption, it is 
raised in incorruption : it is sown in dis- 
honor, it is raised in glory : it is sown in 
weakness, it is raised in power : it is sown 
a natural body, it is raised a spiritual 
body;" the plain purport of which is, 

14 



106 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

that there will exist in the resurrection 
such marks of identity between the nat- 
ural and the spiritual body as will enable 
those familiar with the former to recog- 
nize the latter. How that specific iden- 
tity can be preserved amid the decompo- 
sitions of the grave we pretend not to 
know, but we do know that the specific 
characteristics of various plants and ani- 
mals are maintained in this world under 
changes perhaps equally great, and above 
all, we know that the infinite power of 
Jehovah can accomplish whatever his in- 
finite wisdom determines, whether the 
event proposed be with or without anal- 
ogies in the natural world. So he him- 
self declares in his written word * 

* Several of the foregoing paragraphs are taken from 
the "Religious Lectures " of Dr. Hitchcock, as quoted 
by Dr. Mattison in his able work on " The Resurrec- 
tion." 



The Morning Cometh. 107 

Turning away, then, from all these nat- 
ural emblems so beautiful and suggestive, 
we open the book of revelation to find 
" a more sure word of prophecy." Here 
alone are furnished the conclusive proofs 
of that sublime doctrine which nature 
so profusely symbolizes and illustrates, 
proofs which all point to the miraculous 
character of the resurrection by the 
power of God, thus removing it at once 
from the realm of the impossible and im- 
probable to that of the divinely certain. 
Overlooking its supernatural character, 
not a few have rejected the idea of a 
literal resurrection, and have sought for 
relief in various doubtful theories. Un- 
able to account for a resurrection of this 
kind by any known laws, they have 
shaped, or, rather, as we think, mis- 
shaped, the true doctrine of Scripture 



108 Rachel Weeping for Jier Children. 

into one theory or another, harmonizing 
strictly, as they would have it, with the 
order of nature. But wherefore the ne- 
cessity of all this if the resurrection is to 
be a pure miracle, the product of divine 
almighty power ? Did not God say to 
Abraham, " Is any thing too hard for the 
Lord ?" and to Jeremiah, " Behold, I am 
the Lord, the God of all flesh : is there 
any thing too hard for me ?" And is he 
not "the same yesterday, and to-day, and 
forever?" Keeping this always in mind, 
there is no difficulty in accepting the Bi- 
ble doctrine of a literal resurrection as 
generally held by the Christian world. 
That doctrine is, " that whatever consti- 
tutes and properly belongs to the body 
at the hour of death, and is essential to 
its corporeal identity and integrity, will 
be raised again to life, and will go to 



The Morning Cometh. 109 

constitute the resurrection body."* Add 
to this the idea of universality, as to the 
human race, and we have the complete 
Bible doctrine of a future resurrection. 

Not only was this doctrine distinctly 
foreshadowed in the Old Testament, the 
proofs of which we have not room to 
cite, but our Lord Jesus Christ and his 
apostles confirmed and greatly amplified 
its teachings. To the weeping sisters of 
Lazarus he said, " I am the resurrection, 
and the life : he that believeth in me, 
though he were dead, yet shall he live ; 
and whosoever liveth and believeth in 
me shall never die." To his persecuting 
enemies he yet more broadly proclaimed, 
" The hour is coming, in the which all 
that are in the graves shall hear his 
voice, and shall come forth." When the 

* Mattison on "The Resurrection," p. 14. 



no Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

carping Sadducees sought to puzzle him 
with hard questions, he promptly si- 
lenced them by saying, " The children 
of this world marry and are given in 
marriage ; but they which shall be ac- 
counted worthy to obtain that world 
and the resurrection from the dead, nei- 
ther marry nor are given in marriage ; 
neither can they die any more ; for they 
are equal to the angels, and are the 
children of God, being children of the 
resurrection." At various times he pre- 
dicted his own resurrection, and having 
at length submitted to death, on the 
morning of the third day he majestically 
fulfilled his sacred pledges by bursting 
the bands of death as Samson broke 
the withes and cords with which Delilah 
bound him, and coming forth from his 
rocky tomb the universal Conqueror. In 



The Morning Cometh. Ill 



■a 



that sublime act he mutely proclaimed to 
the world what afterward he so distinctly 
uttered in words, " I am he that liveth, 
and was dead ; and behold I am alive 
for evermore, amen ; and have the keys 
of hell and of death." - 

Following closely in his footsteps, the 
inspired apostles reiterated the same doc- 
trine. Peter and John "taught the peo- 
ple, and preached through Jesus the 
resurrection.". Paul, when a prisoner at 
Jerusalem, proclaimed his " hope toward 
God, which they themselves [the Phari- 
sees] also allow, that there shall be a 
resurrection both of the just and un- 
just." In his further defense before 
Agrippa he said, " Why should it be 
thought a thing incredible with you 
that God should raise the dead ? " 
Opening his epistles, we find them all 



1 1 2 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

studded with the rich, sparkling gems of 
this doctrine : " Even we ourselves groan 
within ourselves waiting for the adop- 
tion, to wit, the redemption of our bod- 
ies." " For since by man came death, by 
man also came the resurrection of the 
dead ; for as in Adam all die, even so in 
Christ shall all be made alive." " Know- 
ing that he which raised up the Lord 
Jesus, shall raise us up also by Jesus, 
and shall present us with you." " For 
our conversation is in heaven ; from 
whence also we look for the Saviour, 
the Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change 
our vile body, that it may be fashioned 
like unto his glorious body, according to 
the working whereby he is able even to 
subdue all things unto himself." " But I 
would not have you to be ignorant, breth- 
ren, concerning them which are asleep, 



The Morning Cometh. 113 

that ye sorrow not, even as others which 
have no hope ; for if we believe that 
Jesus died and rose again, even so them 
also which sleep in Jesus will God bring 
with him." 

Could the doctrine of a literal resur- 
rection be set forth in words more dis- 
tinct or more emphatic than is done in 
these passages ? Yet these are but a 
few of the many which lie scattered 
along the pages of both Testaments. 
How plainly does the voice of revelation 
answer to the voice of nature on this 
subject. And how distinctly does each 
respond to our deep-seated, instinctive 
love for the bodies of our deceased 
friends ! 

Very tenderly the writer last quoted 
says: "In vain does the minister at the 
funeral remind the stricken mother that 

15 



114 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

the little form there in the coffin is not 
her Emma ; that the deathless spirit 
which alone could know, or love, or re- 
member her, has spread its wings for a 
fairer clime, and is not there. All that 
she believes, knows, feels ; but yet she 
bends over the marble-cold body and 
kisses it with an affection as pure and 
holy as that which binds angels together 
in the heavenly sisterhood. And no 
measure of faith or superior love to 
Christ can extinguish this deep-seated 
and ardent love for the bodies of sisters, 
brothers, parents, or children, though we 
know that the soul is not there, and that 
the deserted body is rapidly tending to 
corruption. 

" Is not this continued love for the 
bodies of the dead really God's witness 
in the soul of every man, the echo which 



The Morning Cometh. 115 

nature herself gives back in response to 
the glorious revealed truth that the body 
we love so well is bound to the spirit by 
ties that death can never dissolve, and 
that it will rise and live again when mor- 
tality is swallowed up of life ? Thus 
every sigh that is heaved over the coffin 
and the tomb, every tear that is shed, 
and every kiss imprinted upon the mar- 
ble brow of the dead, are but so many 
witnesses to the truth that the dead 
shall live again, though now they crum- 
ble back to dust." 




CHAPTER VIII. 

SMILING THROUGH TEARS. 

Although the fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall 
fruit be in the vines ; the labor of the olive shall fail, and 
the fields shall yield no meat ; the flock shall be cut off 
from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls : 
yet will I rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my 
salvation. — Hab. iii, 17, 18. 

I am filled with comfort, I am exceeding joyful in all 
our tribulation. — 2 Cor. vii, 4. 

Shadows came on apace, 
Tears were a pensive shower ; 

I cried for timely grace 
To save me from the hour ; 

Thou gavest peace without alloy, 

God, my exceeding joy. 

James W. Alexander. 

MI LING through tears seems a 
strange paradox. Yet it is only 
one of many which the Bible either 



Smiling through Tears. 117 

contains or suggests. What a gloomy 
picture of want and woe, yet how ra- 
diant with joyful trust in God does the 
language of the prophet just quoted pre- 
sent. And the apostles declaration in 
the passage which follows repeats, even 
more strongly, though less poetically, 
the same divine paradox. Nor does 
this passage mark a solitary instance of 
sunshine amid storm in his experience, 
but proclaims the habit of his Christian 
life. His writings abound with just such 
striking antitheses, as witness the follow- 
ing : " We are troubled on every side, 
yet not distressed ; we are perplexed, 
but not in despair ; persecuted, but not 
forsaken ; cast down, but not destroyed." 
"As deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, 
and yet well known ; as dying, and, be- 
hold, we live ; as chastened, and not 



Ii8 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

killed ; as sorrowful, yet always rejoic- 
ing ; as poor, yet making many rich ; 
as having nothing, and yet possessing 
all things." The one part of these ex- 
periences is reproduced, more or less, 
in every one's earthly life ; may not 
the other part be realized also ? The 
trouble and sorrow will come ; may not 
the trust and joy come too, overswelling 
the trouble, and giving gladsome songs in 
the gloomy night of sorrow ? Like the 
fabled bird that sings most sweetly with 
her bosom pressing the thorn, so our 
heavenly Father appoints that the soul's 
sweetest warble may be when the thorn 
of affliction pierces most keenly the suf- 
ferine bosom. And tell me, can there be 
a sharper thorn than child-bereavement ? 
Yet, O my soul, let thy meek Saviours 
prayer in suffering, " Not as I. will, but 



Smiling through Tears. 119 

as thou wilt," be at once thy prayer of 
submission and song of triumph. 

" But all is calm at last, 
' Thy will be done ! ' 
Enough, the storm is past, 
The field is won." 

The motives to patient, cheerful resig- 
nation are many and precious. 

1. The infinite sovereignty of God 
teaches this duty. It tenderly but firmly 
whispers, " Be still and know that I am 
God." Shall we dare to question his 
right to " do according to his own will 
in the army of heaven and among the 
inhabitants of the earth ?" The patriarch 
Job, under a deeper sorrow than has ever 
fallen to the lot of others, with but rare 
exceptions, not only recognized the di- 
vine sovereignty, and accepted it as holy, 
just, and good, but even gave thanks for 



120 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

its beneficent exercise, though it had 
stripped him of his dearest earthly treas- 
ures : " The Lord gave, and the Lord 
hath taken away ; blessed be the name 
of the Lord." Behold in this an exam- 
ple which has been the admiration of all 
succeeding ages, and which all bereaved 
sufferers, however deep their sorrow, are 
invited by the Holy Ghost to imitate. 
(James v, 1 1.) 

2. The overruling providence of God, 
whereby good is brought out of evil, 
points to the same duty. " Too wise to 
err, and too good to be unkind," is an 
aphorism concerning God, which may be 
accepted as always and universally true. 
His wise and good providence, therefore, 
both knows how to overrule each trial 
for our advantage, and is always inclined 
to do it. " Unto the upright there ariseth 



Smiling through Tears. 12 1 

light in the darkness." " Now no chas- 
tening for the present seemeth to be 
joyous, but grievous : nevertheless, aft- 
erward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit 
of righteousness unto them which are 
exercised thereby." 

" Each care, each ill of mortal birth, 

Is sent in pitying love, 
To lift the ling'ring heart from earth, 

And speed its flight above. 
And every pang that wrings the breast, 

And every joy that dies, 
Tell us to seek a purer rest, 

And trust to holier ties." 

Another has eloquently said that " sor- 
row is the noblest of all discipline. Our 
nature shrinks from it, but it is not the 
less for the greatness of our nature. It 
is a scourge, but there is healing in its 
stripes. It is a chalice, and the drink is 
bitter, but strength proceeds from the 



122 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

bitterness. It is a crown of thorns, but 
it becomes a wreath of light on the brow 
it has lacerated. It is a cross on which 
the spirit groans, but every Calvary has 
an Olivet. To every place of crucifixion 
there is likewise a place of ascension." 

By another the rose has been used for 
illustration : " Sometimes when garden- 
ers would brine a rose to richer flower- 
ing they deprive it for a season of light 
and moisture. Silent and dark it stands, 
dropping one fading leaf after another, 
and seeming to go down patiently to 
death ; but when every leaf is dropped, 
and the plant stands stripped to the ut- 
termost, a new life is even then working 
in the buds, from which shall spring a 
tender foliage and a brighter wealth of 
flowers." So, often in human experience, 
leaf after leaf of earthly comfort drops in 



Smiling through Tears. 123 

the silence and darkness of sorrow, but 
only to give back a new and diviner 
bloom to the trusting soul. 

What matters it, then, if the book of 
Providence be to us a sealed book ? 

" Nor Gabriel asks the reason why, 

Nor God the reason gives ; 

Nor dare the favorite angels pry 

Between the folded leaves." 

Is it not enough for us to know that 
the tender providence which counts the 
sparrows as they fall, and even numbers 
the very hairs of our head, though mov- 
ing in the dark to us, is nevertheless 
surely causing "our light affliction, which 
is but for a moment," to work out " for us 
a far more exceeding and eternal weight 
of glory?" Besides all which we have 
the added consolation that " what we 
know not now we shall know hereafter." 



124 RacJiel Weeping for her Children. 

3. Consider that children, when re- 
moved by death, are " taken away from 
the evil to come." " Man is born unto 
trouble, as the sparks fly upward." The 
brightest skies, the balmiest atmosphere, 
the fairest surroundings, the happiest 
homes, furnish no exceptions to this 
universal rule. Sin has left its blight 
of weakness and pain, of disappointment 
and grief, of anguish and tears, upon the 
whole human race. 

" What troubles have we seen ! 

What conflicts have we pass'd ! " 

And can we expect a different lot for 
our children ? They are born under the 
same curse of sin, and must suffer in less 
or greater measure its same natural con- 
sequences. 

Add to this the uncertainty of their 
future moral character and destiny. 



Smiling through Tears. 125 

Who but God himself can foresee either 
the one or the other ? To human short- 
sightedness what a lottery is the moral 
future of every child ! If Charles Wes- 
ley felt constrained to ask for himself 
and others of his day the question, 

" Who can resolve the doubt 

That tears my anxious breast ? 

Shall I be with the damn'd cast out, 

Or number'd with the blest ? " 

can we help asking the same question 
concerning our children ? 

O parent ! dare you say that the sweet 
innocent whom you have just laid away 
in yonder tomb would not, had he lived, 
have grown up to be a moral monster, 
breaking your heart by a vicious life, 
and bringing your gray hairs in sorrow 
to the grave, by a miserable death ? Ah, 
how many a child, reared tenderly and 



126 Racliel Weeping for her Children. 

carefully, has wrung the parents' souls 
with a far keener anguish than they 
could have felt over his infantile death, 
however lamented. Taken away from 
the evil to come ! Stricken one, murmur 
not against the wisdom of Him who sees 
the end from the beginning, and whose 
goodness ofttimes presses one cup of sor- 
row to unwilling lips that another cup, 
sevenfold more bitter, may be forever 
withheld. " It is the Lord, let him do 
what seemeth him good." And shall it 
not seem good to you also that he has 
transferred the tender plants of promise 
you so much prized to his own celestial 
"garden of spices," where no burning sun 
of affliction can parch them, no chilling 
wind of trouble blast them, no sudden 
frost of disappointment blight them, no 
rude hand of violence break and destroy 



Smiling through Tears. 127 

them, but where, " safe from diseases and 
decline," they shall bloom in eternal fresh- 
ness and beauty ? 

But great as is this escape by the 
early dead from the natural evils of the 
present state, it is infinitely transcended 
by the fact that now no sin can poison 
their souls, no tempting vice distort them, 
no yawning perdition engulf them. The 
risk is all over, the danger forever past. 
The anxious uncertainties of a future 
probation on earth are all swallowed up 
in the blessed certainties of a present and 
eternal glorification in heaven. 

4. And this is suggestive of another 
thought — the thought of treasure laid up 
in heaven. Should we not deem it far 
more a privilege than a simple duty to 
" lay up treasure in heaven," as Jesus 
commands ? It must, indeed, often in- 



128 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

volve self-denial, and sometimes, even 
great suffering, as when, yielding up our 
last fond hope, we resign our little ones 
in death. Yet when the recollection 
comes to us that death is but the Lord's 
messenger to call back to himself his 
own lent treasures, shall we murmur at 
their departure ? To do this were to 
sin both against them and our own 
souls, since their death is an infinite 
gain to themselves and a corresponding 
gain to us if we are but rightly exercised 
thereby. Though they always belong in 
fact to God, he allows us to call them 
our own, and then says to us, with refer- 
ence to them, in common with our other 
possessions, " Lay up for yourselves treas- 
ures in heaven." This we are to do, as 
to our children, by fully consecrating 
them to him while they live, and cheer- 



Smiling through Tears. 129 

fully resigning them to him when they 
die. The death of every dear child be- 
comes thus a blessed investment, the 
eternal profits of which accrue to us in 
part even here. These profits come to 
us in fewer thoughts of earth, and more 
frequent meditations of heaven ; in less 
concern for the things of time, and 
greater interest in the things of eter- 
nity ; in diminished attachment to the 
material and visible, and a warmer glow 
of affection toward the invisible and im- 
mortal. 

Some years ago our eyes fell upon this 
thrilling illustration : " I was riding," says 
the narrator, "on the western shore of 
the Hudson, dotted with elegant country 
seats, and so elevated as to command 
a fine view of the opposite County of 
Dutchess. Passing a substantial mansion 

17 



130 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

I observed carriages standing around the 
entrance, and a hearse, plainly indicating 
the occasion of the gathering. A young 
man, the son of parents now advanced in 
life, was to be buried. The clergyman 
in attendance was just closing his re- 
marks when I stopped at the door, and 
after a short but eloquent pause in the 
services, the afflicted father rose, and, 
overcoming the emotion with which he 
struggled, said: 'A few months ago one 
of my sons moved to the other side of the 
river, and resides on the shore in view 
of the spot where we are assembled. 
And now I find that my thoughts are 
over there far more frequently than they 
were before. I had, before, friends there 
whom I loved, and I had an interest in 
the people, but I had no child there ; 
but since that son has been a resident 



Smiling through Tears. 131 

beyond the river my heart is there 
often, and I love to be there. So it has 
been with me during the few days that 
have passed since this other son crossed 
the river of death, and, as I trust, has 
entered heaven. My thoughts are often 
there now. True, I had friends there 
before, but I had no child there. Now 
I have an interest in heaven such as I 
never felt till one of my children went 
there to live.' " 

5. Finally, if, with every pang of be- 
reavement, there comes, as God surely 
designs, a new incentive to duty, why 
should not each falling tear be greeted 
with a smile ? 

O afflicted one, review the past, and 
see if no important moral duties have 
been neglected, or at the most but slug- 
gishly performed ! Perhaps during long 



132 RacJiel Weeping for her Children. 

years God has been saying to you, " Give 
me thy heart ;" but you have withheld it 
till now. Not that your judgment and 
conscience have never prompted com- 
pliance with this loving demand, but 
you have resisted both the one and the 
other. Now he comes to you again, 
making your " heart soft " by bereave- 
ment, and reiterates the same tender 
entreaty. Ere nature dries her tears, 
and neglect hardens the now softened 
spirit, can you hesitate to adopt the 
pious resolve of David, who, referring 
back to the death of his beloved Absa- 
lom and its attendant calamities, wrote 
the words, " When thou saidst, Seek ye 
my face ; my heart said unto thee, Thy 
face, Lord, will I seek?" This done, with 
him, or at least with another of like ex- 
periences, you may be able ere long joy- 



Smiling through Tears. 133 

fully to add : " It is good for me that I 
have been afflicted ; that I might learn 
thy statutes." 

But, perhaps, you are a Christian al- 
ready. If so, the incentive to duty aris- 
ing from your present affliction points in 
other directions. How forcibly does it 
urge to that entire consecration of your- 
self to God which recognizes him as 
the only supreme, unfailing, unchanging 
good. " Riches certainly make them- 
selves wings ; they fly away as an eagle 
toward heaven." Honors rise and fall 
like the tides of the ocean ; fame is as 
fickle and unsubstantial as the wind ; 
while 

" Friend after friend departs — 
Who hath not lost a friend ? " 

What follows as at once the highest 
privilege and most exalted duty of mor- 



134 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

tals ? Simply this: " Thou shalt love 
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, 
and with all thy soul, and with all thy 
mind, and with all thy strength." If 
your bereavement shall be to you an 
effectual reminder of this your supreme, 
but, perhaps, least fulfilled obligation, it 
will prove to be, painful as it is, just 
what God intended — a rich " blessing in 
disguise." 

Does not Providence also open to you 
new doors of opportunity for Christian 
work ? In the beginning Jesus said, 
" The harvest truly is plenteous, but the 
laborers are few ; " and both parts of the 
statement are still true. Souls are to- 
day perishing for lack of knowledge, and 
God is continually asking, " Whom shall 
I send, and who will go for us?" He 
calls for laborers outside of the pulpit 



Smiling through Tears. 135 

not less than in ; nor does his call em- 
brace the one sex to the exclusion of the 
other. Can any earnest Christian look 
at the work which every-where needs to 
be done in the Church, the Sunday- 
school, the temperance cause, and kin- 
dred enterprises, without accepting at 
once the Saviour's further declaration, 
"The fields are white already to har- 
vest ?" Many fathers, and especially 
many mothers, are restrained by domes- 
tic responsibilities and duties from par- 
ticipation in active Christian work ; but 
as Providence, by bereavement or other- 
wise, lessens the number and urgency of 
their home engagements, he thereby "or- 
dains — appoints — them to go and bring 
forth fruit ;" go to the sanctuary and the 
Sabbath-school, to the prayer circle and 
experience meeting, to the homes of the 



136 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

poor and ignorant, perhaps " out into the 
highways and hedges," and bring in the 
unsaved to Jesus. God having thus 
dealt with you, O mourner, shall you 
not eagerly embrace your new-found 
opportunity to become a worker with 
him for the rescue of perishing souls ? 
The honors and rewards of so doing 
who can estimate ? Yet for our encour- 
agement God permits us to " know that 
he which converteth the sinner from the 
error of his way shall save a soul from 
death, and shall hide a multitude of 



sins." 



Your bereavement, however, may not 
have left you childless. One or more 
may still remain to you. Those fiercer 
blasts which once swept over the home 
of Job, and have since, here and there, 
desolated other households, have been 



Smiling through Tears. 137 

withheld from you by Him who "tem- 
pers the wind to the shorn lamb " — so 
sparing those other bright eyes and rosy 
cheeks, pattering feet, and merry voices, 
which death also coveted, but which God, 
who " will not suffer us to be tempted 
above that we are able," has denied to 
his insatiable demands. Are not these 
surviving ones doubly dear to you now ? 
And with this increased sense of their 
preciousness comes there not a deeper 
inspiration of soul to train them for God 
and heaven ? If this inspiration shall be 
devoutly cherished, and grow into a rich 
development of prayer, instruction, and 
holy example for their benefit, both you 
and they will have cause, even in eter- 
nity, to thank God for the occasion that 
gave it birth. Would that all parents 

might realize to what a degree God has 
5 18 5 



138 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

linked the future destinies of their chil- 
dren with their own training of them, 
and especially the almost decisive influ- 
ence of very early impressions. Dr. 
Rush has left on record this emphatic 
testimony : " I have invariably found in 
very young children a far greater apti- 
tude for instruction on religious subjects 
than any others ; and as the memory is 
the first faculty that opens in the minds 
of children, of how much importance is 
it that this faculty be early stored with 
right knowledge. For as all the liquors 
poured into a cup will always taste of 
that which was first poured in, so the 
knowledge first received by the minds of 
children will communicate its own tinct- 
ure and relish to all the knowledge aft- 
erward acquired." 

Weeping parent, let no excessive grief, 



Smiling through Tears. 139 

no overwhelming anguish, no melancholy 
absorption of thought and feeling over 
thy cherished dead, benumb the interest 
or paralyze the efforts that belong to the 
living. More than pardonable was that 
wild outburst of King David's grief when 
he exclaimed, " O my son Absalom, my 
son, my son Absalom ! would God I had 
died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my 
son !" But when, following these loud 
and heart-rending lamentations over the 
unhappy fate of his son, he buried him- 
self in gloomy repinings, and for a time 
sacrificed the public responsibilities of 
the monarch to the private anguish of 
the father, it was fitting that Joab, by 
just rebukes, should rouse him to a 
proper appreciation of duty toward his 
living subjects. Witness the change. 
Tears for the dead he could not, indeed, 



140 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

restrain ; but now his smile, beaming out 
through those tears, diffuses joy once 
more over his household and through- 
out his realm, and he devotes himself 
with renewed energy to the practical 
duties of his station. It was just at 
this juncture that he wrote the glowing 
wish, so beautifully expressed in the one 
hundred and forty-fourth psalm, " That 
our sons may be as plants grown up in 
their youth ; that our daughters may be 
as corner-stones, polished after the simili- 
tude of a palace." Such may be your 
living sons and daughters. And to you 
belongs the sublime duty of making 
them such, by cultivating them as moral 
plants in the household garden, and pol- 
ishing them as spiritual stones in the 
home palace. Surely here is work for 
head, and heart, and hands ; for prayer 



Smiling through Tears. 141 

and faith, for instruction and reproof, for 
counsel and example. And besides the 
high command of him who says, " Train 
up a child in the way he should go," you 
have as your ample warrant of duty the 
assured certainty of success ; for the same 
divine lips which utter the command pro- 
claim also the promise, " And when he is 
old he will not depart from it." 



CHAPTER IX. 

CONCLUSION. 

'WjHE writer and the reader having 
^^ now traveled together in this brief 
journey " through the valley of Baca," or 
weeping — though not without finding it 
a "valley of blessing" also — the time 
hastens for separation. But before part- 
ing let us linger to gather up a few pre- 
cious pearls, the transmuted tear-drops 
of those who have preceded us in the 
journey, and by whom they have been 
left along the way for our enrichment. 

The following beautiful extract is from 
a sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Charles 
Wadsworth, of Philadelphia. The text 



Conclusion. 143 

was taken from Job v, 26, "As a shock 
of corn cometh in in his season." He 
said : — 

"In his moral tillage God cultivates 
many flowers, seemingly only for their 
exquisite beauty and fragrance. For 
when bathed in soft sunshine they have 
burst into blossom, then the divine Hand 
gathers them from the earthly fields to 
be kept in crystal vases in blessed man- 
sions above. Thus little children lie — 
some in the sweet bud, some in fuller 
blossom, but never too early to make 
heaven fairer and sweeter with their im- 
mortal bloom. 

" Verily, to the eye of faith, nothing is 
fairer than the death of young children. 
Sight and sense indeed recoil from it. 
The flower that, like a breathing rose, 
filled heart and home with an exquisite 



144 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

delight, alas ! we are stricken with sore 
anguish to find its stem broken and the 
blossom gone. But unto Faith, eagle- 
eyed beyond mental vision, and winged 
to mount like the singing lark over the 
fading rainbow unto the blue heaven, 
even this is touchingly lovely. 

" The child's earthly ministry was well 
done, for the rose does its work as grand- 
ly in blossom as the vine with its fruit. 
And having helped to sanctify and lift 
heavenward the very hearts that broke 
at its farewell, it has gone from this 
troublesome sphere ere the winds chilled 
or the rains stained it, leaving the world 
it blessed and the skies through which it 
passed still sweet with its lingering fra- 
grance, to its glory as an ever-unfolding 
flower in the blessed garden of God. 
Surely prolonged life on earth hath no 



Conclusion. 145 

boon like this ! For such mortal loveli- 
ness to put on immortality — to rise from 
the carnal with so little memory of earth 
that the mother's cradle seemed to have 
been rocked in the house of many man- 
sions — to have no experience of a wea- 
ried mind and chilled affections, but from 
a child's joyous heart growing up into 
the power of an archangelic intellect — 
to be raptured as a blessed babe through 
the gates of paradise — ah ! this is better 
than to watch as an old prophet for the 
car of fire in the valley of Jordan. 

" Surely God is wise in all his works. 
And even amid our tears will we rejoice 
in this harvest feast that, among us, as 
elsewhere, he gathers so largely ' the 
flowers in their season.' 

"And as of flowers, so of fruits, in 
their order and after their kind, each 

19 



146 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

' cometh in his season/ Some fruits 
ripen early. Scarcely has the delicious 
June poured its full glory over earth ere 
some rare and delicious species are al- 
ready ripened. And some ripen later. 
There are trees that do not even blos- 
som until midsummer. And there are 
fruits that remain hard and unsavory till 
God shakes them in the wild autumnal 
wind, and treats them with the distress- 
ful ministry of frost. And so it is in the 
spiritual — souls develop and mature dif- 
ferently. Some are ready for gathering 
at life's early summer ; some come not 
to the earine till the time of the latter 
rain. And God watches carefully that 
each shall ' come in season.' We indeed 
sometimes talk of 'untimely deaths,' of 
young Christians removed too early from 
spheres of usefulness, as if the omniscient 



Conclusion. 14.7 

Husbandman did not know when his im- 
mortal grapes are purple and his corn in 
the ear. Surely God does the whole 
thing wisely, gathering each spiritual 
growth just as it comes into condition 
for its immortal uses. 

" O thought beautiful and comforting ! 
Death is not destruction, but harvesting 
— the gathering from fields of mortal till- 
age ripe fruits in their season. ' They 
joy before thee according to the joy in 
harvest.' And why, then, should our 
harvest feast be sad over garnered im- 
mortality ? Why should this sweetly 
tolling bell, filling the troubled earthly 
airs with a gentle sound, so startle and 
appal the trustful spirit ? God strength- 
en your faith so to behold this mysteri- 
ous thing in a light from heaven, that its 
dark vail shall seem transparent, and a 



148 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

face with soft eyes look forth loving and 
bright as the face of an angel. 

" Death is not destruction ! Death is 
not even decay ! Death is harvesting ! 
Hear ye this, O disconsolate hearts ! 
Ye parents from whose household sweet 
children have been rudely parted, hear 
ye this, ' The Beloved has gone down 
into his garden to gather lilies!' Ye 
children who have lost revered parents, 
and whose life is chilled in the shadow 
of that dread thing — orphanage — hear 
ye this : 'As a shock of corn cometh in 
his season,' so are matured souls gath- 
ered to the garner of God." 

Years ago when the dark angel of 
death entered our home, and hovering 
gloomily over our precious birdling for 
days and weeks, at length bore her away, 
we found a deep, mournful comfort in the 



Conclusion. 149 

following touching " Lament," from the 
pen of Park Benjamin, then recently 
published. May it prove an equal sol- 
ace to other wounded hearts ! 

" Thou art torn from me, my blossom, thy fragrance is 

no more, 
And I thy early blighting with bitter tears deplore ; 
In vain I look on other flowers, no rose so fair I see, 
For Ada was the sweetest bud in all the world to me. 

" O thou wast nurtured tenderly, and watered with the 

dew 
Of all life's best affection, unchangeable and true ; 
But summer breezes wafted thee where summer daisies 

lie, 
Alas ! my beautiful, that thou shouldst fade away and 

die. 

My child ! my child ! my darling child ! I sit and weep 

alone, 
To think that thou, my gentle dove, so far away hast 

flown ; 
So far away, for that bright heaven to which thy soul 

was borne 
Is very far from this dim earth where I am left to 

mourn. 



150 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

" O, when the music of thy voice fell on my listening 

ear, 
Unconscious as a robin's chirp, and, ah, more soft and 

clear, 
I dreamed when years had passed away I still should 

hear thy words, 
More welcome than the harmonies of all the singing 

birds. 

" But thou art gone, and those bright eyes are darkened 

from the sun ; 
There is no freshness in the cheeks I loved to look 

upon ; 
The red has vanished from the lips so often pressed to 

mine, 
And nothing but the cold clay form remains of what 

was thine. 

" Pure innocent, thy home is with the holy and the blest ; 
Thy Saviour's bosom now, my dove, thy happy ark of 

rest ; 
And though with summer birds and flowers my little 

Ada fled, 
The glory of the cherubim is shining round her head." 

The recognition of friends in the heav- 
enly state, between death and the resur- 
rection, has been assumed without dis- 



Conclusion. 1 5 1 

cussion. The inspired word, while no- 
where distinctly asserting this doctrine, 
clearly implies it in many unmistakable 
passages, which a lack of space forbids 
us to cite. The fact that it is never, or 
at most very rarely, questioned by either 
the Christian pulpit or press, has rendered 
the formal proof of it unnecessary. 

With this implied teaching of revela- 
tion, and this common consent of the 
Church, agrees the expectation of all who 
hope to reach heaven themselves. Sub- 
ordinate only to their joyful anticipation 
of knowing Jesus, with all the holy 
prophets and apostles, as by a divine 
intuition, is the blissful expectation of 
recognizing the glorified kindred and 
friends whom they had known on earth. 
" Now we see through a glass, darkly ; 
but then face to face : now I know in 



152 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

part ; but then shall I know even as also 
I am known." 

" O ! ye weary, sad, and toss'd ones, 

Droop not, faint not by the way ; 
Ye shall join the lov'd and lost ones 

In the land of perfect day ! 
Harp-strings, touched by angel fingers, 

Murmur in my raptured ear ; 
Evermore their sweet song lingers : 

' We shall know each other there.' " 

Yet one more beautiful pearl we leave 
with the reader, part of a poem written 
many years since by Rev. John Moultrie, 
of England. For the use of it we are 
indebted to Rev. Dr. R. Nelson, by 
whom it was recited with overpowering 
effect in a sermon at Mount Tabor, N. J., 
during the camp-meeting of 1874. We 
give the quoted stanzas with slight ver- 
bal alterations : — 

" I have a child, a dear, sweet child ; 
His age I cannot tell, 



Conclusion. 153 

For they count not by months and years 
Where he has gone to dwell. 

To us for few and anxious months 

His infant smiles were given ; 
And then he bade farewell to earth, 

And went to live in heaven. 

I cannot tell what form is his, 

What looks he weareth now, 
Nor guess how bright a glory crowns 

His shining seraph brow. 

The thoughts that fill his sinless soul, 

The bliss that he doth feel, 
Are numbered with the secret things 

Which God doth not reveal. 

But I know well — God tells me this, 

That he is now at rest 
Where all dear sainted children are, 

On Jesus' loving breast. 

I know the angels fold him close 

Beneath their glittering wings, 
And soothe him with a song that breathes 

Of heaven's divinest things. 

I know that we shall meet our babe 

In that bright world on high, 
Where God fore'er shall wipe away 

All tears from every eye." 
20 



154 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

O aching heart ! is it not enough to 
know all this ? Yet even this marks not 
the limit of God's blessed revealings. 
" The Lord will give grace and glory," is 
a promise as sure as it is broad. It 
pledges grace here not less than glory 
hereafter ; not grace, it may be, to take 
away the heartache of bereavement, but 
certainly grace to bear it without mur- 
muring as a visitation of love. The 
saintly Alfred Cookman was called upon 
by a member of his Church in the early 
part of his last illness. The errand was 
a sad one. The visitor was overwhelmed 
with the anguish of a fresh bereavement, 
and had come to speak about the funeral. 
He could not understand the providence 
that had just taken from him his pre- 
cious boy. The pastor, having listened 
to his almost frantic expressions of grief, 



Conclusion. 155 

tenderly said, " My dear brother, I know 
all about it. God came and took from 
me my boy, a noble, promising boy. O 
how my heart ached ! And the ache 
does not stop ; but there is such a thing 
as the blessed Jesus' dwelling in the 
heart and bearing all its ache. So he 
sweetly came into my heart and bore its 
deep sorrow, and has been bearing it 
ever since. I never in this world expect 
deliverance from the heartache of that 
bereavement, but the indwelling pres- 
ence of Jesus takes away all its bitter- 
ness." 

May such be the rich experience of 
each chastened reader. Why should it 
not be ? The ancient assurance, " My 
grace is sufficient for thee," belongs alike 
to all times and places and persons. 
Grace sufficient — blessed words! Suf- 



156 Rachel Weeping for her Children. 

ficient to weep without repining over the 
dead, and train up in meekness and wis- 
dom the living ; to kiss in tearful grati- 
tude the hand that has bereaved, and 
anticipate without impatience a happy 
reunion of the ties now sundered ; to 
fulfill unselfishly and cheerfully the life- 
mission of earth, and, triumphing over 
death, possess the " inheritance incor- 
ruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not 
away, reserved in heaven." " Now unto 
him that is able to keep you from fall- 
ing, and to present you faultless before 
the presence of his glory with exceeding 
joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, 
be glory and majesty, dominion and 
power, both now and forever. Amen." 

THE END. 




flouth, 



U3 

PUBLISHED BY NELSON & PHILLIPS, 

- SOS BROADWAY, N. Y. 



iVilliam the Taciturn. 

Translated by J. P. Lacroix. From the French 

of L. Abelous. Two Illustrations |1 25 

Thomas Chalmers. 

A Biographical Stud}'. By James Dodd. Large 
16mo.... 1 bO 

Word of God Opened. 

By B. K, Peirce. Large 16mo 1 25 

Christian Maiden. 

Memorials of Eliza Hessel. With a Portrait. By 
Joshua Priestley I 23 

Stories and Pictures from Church History. 

For Young People. Illustrated. Large 16mo. . 1 23 

Agnes Morton s Trials 

And the Young Governess. By Mrs. £. N. 
Janvier. Large 16mo 1 S3 

Life of Oliver Cromwell. 

By Charles Adams, D.D. 16mo - ... 1 25 

Eann and its Wonders. 

By Charles Adams, D.D. 16mo 1 25 

Edith Vernon s Life -Work. 

Large 16mo. Illustrated 125 

Uxiles in Babylon. 

By A. L. O. K Illustrated 125 



i CHOICE BOOKS FOR ^OUTH. 

Lindsay Lee and his Friends. 

A Story for the Time. Large 16mo Hi '^ 

Gustavus Adolphus, 

The Hero of the Reformation. From the French 
of L Abelous. By Mrs. C. A. Lacroix. Illus- 
trated. Large 16mo \ & 

Heroine of the White Nile; 

Or, What a Woman Did and Dared. A Sketch 
of the Remarkable Travels and Experiences of 
Miss Alexandrine Tinne. By Prof. William 
Wells. Illustrated. Large 16mo I 00 

Memoir of Washington Irving. 

With Selections from his Works, and Criticisms. 

By Chakles Adams, D.D. Large 16mo 1 '$5 

Itinerant Side ; 

Or, Pictures of Life in the Itinerancy. With 
Engravings 1 CO 

Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson. 

By C. Adams, D. D. Large 16mo J 50 

Lady Huntingdon Portrayed. 

Including Brief Sketches of some of her Friends 
and Colaborers. By the Author of " The Mission- 
ary Teacher," "Sketches of Mission Life," etc. \ 9& 

Ministering Children . 

A Story showing how even a Child may be as a 
Ministering Angel of Love to the Poor and Sor- 
rowful. Illustrated 1(9 

Lives made Sublime by Faith and Works. 

Large 16m o. Illustrated „. t 2t> 

My Sister Margaret. 

A Temperance Story. Four Illustrations, oj 

Mrs. C. M. Edwards .25 

Palitsy the Potter; 

Or, the Huguenot, Artist, and Martyr. A True 
Narrative Ey C. L. Puightwell. Illustrated. t 25 



CHOICE BOOKS FOR YOUTH. 3 

Footprints of Roger Williams. 

By Rev. Z. A. Mudge. Large 16mo %\ 2S 

Path oj Life. 

By D. Wise, D.D. Large 16mo 1 06 

Gilt Edge 1 33 

The Ministry of Life. 

By Maria Louisa Charleswortfi, Author of 
''Ministering Children," etc. With Illustrations 1 35 

Pleasant Pathways j 

Or, Persuasives to Early Piety. By Daniel 

Wise, D.D. Steel Engravings 135 

The Poet Preacher: 

A Brief Memorial of Charles Wesley, the Eminent 
Preacher and Poet. By Charles Adams. Illus- 
trated 1 00 

The Stony Road. 

A Scottish Story from Real Life. Large 16mo.. 85 

Pillars of Truth. 

A Series of Sermons on the Decalogue. By E. 

O Haven, D.D 1 25 

The Rainbow Side. 

A Sequel to "The Itinerant." By Mrs. C. M. 
Edwards. With Four Illustrations 35 

The Shepherd King; 

Or, a Sick Minister's Lectures on the Shepherd 
of Bethlehem, and the Blessing that followed 
Them. By A. L. O. E., Authoress of the " Young 
Pilgrim," "The Roby Family," etc. Illustrated. 1 & 

Trials of an Inventor: 

Life and Discoveries of Charles Goodyeai. Largo 

16mo 1 U 

Views from Plymouth Rock. 

Bv Z. A Mudge. With Sis Illustrations. Large 
tftiisy.. 1 £0 



4 CHOICE BOOKS FOR YOUTH, 

Words that Shook the World; 

Or, Martin Luther his own Biographer. Being 
Pictures of the Great Reformer, sketched mainly 
from his own Sayings. By Charles Adams. Il- 
lustrated $1 25 

Young Lady's Counselor. 

By D. Wise, D.D. Large 16mo 1 Ik! 

Gilt Edge 1^0 

Young Mans Counselor. 

By D. Wise, D.D. Large 16mo 100 

Gilt Edge L 3C 

Six Years in India. 

By Mr. Humphreys 1 35 

Young Shetlandcr and his Home. 

Being a Biographicnl Sketch of Young Thomas 
Edmonston, the Naturalist, and an Interesting 
Account of the Shetland Islands. By B. K. 
Peirce, D.D. Illustrated. Large 16mo 135 

Children of Lake Huron; 

Or, the Cousins at Clovcrley. 16mo. 1 35 

Dora Hamilton; 

Or, Sunshine and Shadow. Six Illustrations. 

16rac 90 

Discipline of Alice Lee. 

A Truthful Temperance Story. Illustrated 

16mo I 00 

Savanna De L'Orme. 

A Story of Huguenot Times. Large 16mo. . 1 2£ 

The Christian Statesman. 

A Portraiture of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton. By 

Z. A. Mudge I 25 

The Forest Boy. 

A Sketch of the Life of Abraham Lincoln. By 

S. A. Midge. Lame 16m o 1 2P 



1/ , 



